Overview

• Harvard agreed to relinquish its 19th-century daguerreotypes from the Peabody Museum to Charleston’s International African American Museum under a confidential financial settlement with descendant Tamara Lanier.
• The images, shot in 1850 at the behest of biologist Louis Agassiz, depict Renty Taylor, his daughter Delia and other enslaved individuals forced to pose for racist polygenist research without consent.
• Lanier, who sued Harvard in 2019 for wrongful seizure of her ancestors’ images, saw her ownership claim rejected by the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court in 2022 but was allowed to pursue emotional distress damages.
• Harvard has neither verified Lanier’s genealogical connection to the subjects nor formally acknowledged its historical complicity in slavery linked to the daguerreotypes.
• The International African American Museum has pledged to collaborate with Lanier on how the photographs are exhibited and contextualized to honor the subjects’ dignity and legacy.