The Philip DeFranco Show - MS 5.9 Why Harvard Is Being Sued Over This 169-Year-Old Slave Photo…

Starting point is 00:00:00 Hello, hello, welcome to your extra morning show. My name is Philip DeFranco and today we're going to be talking about how a 169 year old photo is at the center of a case against Harvard University. Tamara Lanier is suing Harvard for ownership of a couple of photos that she claims show her great-great-great-grandfather Renty and Renty's daughter Delia. And as far as why these photos would be notable to anyone outside of the family, they are reportedly the oldest known photos of an enslaved African American. They are part of a collection of 15 similar photos, but these photos aren't just documentary. These photos were also used to prove a 150 year old racist scientific theory.

Starting point is 00:00:29 And today this case against Harvard raises many more questions than just who owns the photo of Renty. From how American universities are profiting from slavery to whether Harvard has a moral responsibility to give up ownership of that photo. And so to take you through this case, to see what it means for Harvard and these other universities,

Starting point is 00:00:43 and the larger implications of this case. We had Dylan Siegel from the team dive into it. Let's start with the photos of Renty and Delia that Lanier claims are hers. That image and a few others are part of a series of photos of seven enslaved Africans in 1850, in which they were stripped to the waist and shot in both profile and portrait.

Starting point is 00:00:59 The photos are actually an old kind of photograph called a daguerreotype, taken by an equally old kind of camera. Lanier's lawsuit and several publications claim that the photos were commissioned by a Harvard professor named Louis Agassiz, a Swiss-born zoologist sometimes considered the father of American natural science.

Starting point is 00:01:13 But a spokeswoman for Harvard's Peabody Museum said that there isn't any evidence that Agassiz commissioned the photos. On the other hand, the case filing provides some pretty convincing historical evidence, like an 1850 letter from another scientist claiming that they had just completed the daguerreotypes for Agassiz. Either way, Agassiz was not just a zoologist.

Starting point is 00:01:30 He believed in a racist pseudoscience called polygenesis that was used to claim that blacks were inferior to whites, and he used these photos as scientific proof to argue that theory. Fast forward to 1976. The forgotten images were rediscovered in a cabinet of the museum's attic. Since then, Harvard has benefited from the photos through things like licensing deals on books, as well as enforcing its copyright on the images. The series of images has also been widely used in original research. In recent years, though, the university has relaxed its enforcement of its copyright.

Starting point is 00:01:56 So that's how Harvard received the photos. But how did Lanier learn about her ancestry? As a child, my mom often talked about her enslaved ancestors, particularly the man in the image who she fondly referred to as Papa Renty. Lanier had heard of Renty, but only learned of the photo's existence in 2010 and began researching her lineage. In 2011, she contacted then Harvard president

Starting point is 00:02:17 and historian Drew Faust. Lanier claims she detailed her ancestral ties to Renty, but in 2014, a spokeswoman for the Peabody Museum reportedly told a Norwich, Connecticut outlet that Lanier had given us nothing that directly connects her ancestor to the person in our photograph. In late March this year, Lanier finally sued Harvard for ownership of the daguerreotype. The lawsuit alleges that the images were illegally taken because Renty did not consent to the photos, and that Harvard has caused her emotional distress by dismissing her attempts to claim

Starting point is 00:02:41 an interest in the photos since 2011. Lanier's lawyer, Benjamin Crump, also believes this case could be a turning point because of its implications beyond Harvard. But make no mistake about it, it is landmark in its scope because it will be the first time that descendants of African slaves in America have been compensated in any way, fashion, or form from an American institution. But before we get to what those larger implications are, there are a couple questions that the case raises. First, who owns the photo? The law seems to be pretty clear.

Starting point is 00:03:15 One lawyer who represents auction houses told the New York Times, The person who hits the shutter button and takes the photograph is the one who owns the copyright on the image. That's 100% the law, and it's been the law forever. But Lanier's lawyer argues that the photos were taken unlawfully, have been unlawfully owned by Harvard since then, and that Harvard's ownership violates the 13th Amendment, which abolished slavery, so the university doesn't have a claim to them. And so when Renty was freed in 1865, incumbent in that was his right to own his own image. This is critical when you think about what Harvard is saying,

Starting point is 00:03:52 that we own the rights, not your linear descendants. To learn more about the context these photos were created in, we spoke with Leslie Harris, professor of history and African American studies at Northwestern University. Under slavery, enslaved people were never asked, they were presumed not to have the power to give consent. They were wholly owned. And so we're looking at these photographs

Starting point is 00:04:13 that are in a moment where consent has no meaning. Besides disputes over legal ownership, there are also doubts about Lanier's lineage. Lanier says that the rentee in the photo is her great-great-great-grandfather. But the slave owner's notes found with the photos reportedly list both a rentee and big rentee. And in 2014, a Peabody Museum spokeswoman also said that there were 91 slaves named Renty living in South Carolina at that time. Add on top of that the difficulty of proving ancestry to slaves.

Starting point is 00:04:38 It's very difficult, both because of the record-keeping during slavery, which was usually not for the benefit of those, you know, of the enslaved to know who they are or who their parents are. And also the disruption of the end of slavery, civil war, you know, all kinds of things make it difficult for people to know that. But what counts as evidence for a family with a long oral history versus a court of law could be very different. There's also the practical question of preserving these delicate images. Lanier's lawyer suggested that if they won, they would take the images on tour around the U.S. and then loan them to museums. But Professor Harris believes the image's physical state is important to consider. I would prefer that these kinds of objects were kept in a museum. I say that not only, certainly preservation is extremely important from what I say that not only, certainly preservation

Starting point is 00:05:25 is extremely important from what I read in the coverage that these are very delicate objects and need a controlled environment to survive. But also to be kept in the public realm. If we were to lose in some way access to some of these materials that help us tell the truth about what happens, that doesn't seem to be the best outcome, either individually or for society,

Starting point is 00:05:49 because it doesn't allow us a way to mark what we don't ever want to do again. Regardless of how Lanier's case ends, her claims speak to much larger questions that universities in the US have been trying to grapple with. Because Harvard's ties to slavery aren't the exception. Multiple highly esteemed universities directly and indirectly profited from slavery,

Starting point is 00:06:07 helping them become the wealthy and respected institutions they are today. And that doesn't just mean monetarily, but producing impactful knowledge to the ways in which some fields of study, anthropology, history, etc. Part of what they were doing was producing racialized knowledge. They had an impact on the wider world. Their status, in part, was because they were researchers and could speak to the wider world, and those were sort of mutually reinforcing. So in all of those ways, institutions profited from slavery,

Starting point is 00:06:39 discussed and debated slavery. And that point stands for Agassiz at Harvard because his prestige and knowledge of both zoology and his racist pseudoscience accrued to Harvard as well. A couple other institutions include Columbia and Brown, which have examined their institutions' connections with slavery. Brown addressed its links to the Atlantic slave trade in 2006, and Columbia now dedicates a whole section

Starting point is 00:06:58 of its website to the university's connections to slavery. But one university that stands out today is Georgetown. In 1838, Georgetown directly benefited from slavery when the local Jesuits sold 272 slaves to help the school avoid financial ruin. In 2016, under increasing pressure to examine its past, the university created a working group on slavery, memory, and reconciliation. The university also announced it would offer preferential admission to descendants of those sold in 1838. The first descendants began attending in fall 2017. But the student began attending in fall 2017.

Starting point is 00:07:25 But the student body wants to go further. In April this year, Georgetown students approved a $27.20 fee on each student that would benefit the descendants of those 272 slaves. That would mean about $400,000 in the first year. The measure is now awaiting approval from the administration. But most notably, this would be the first time

Starting point is 00:07:42 that an institution created an official reparations policy. And there's a parallel between Georgetown's measure for reparations and Lanier's case. Remember what Lanier's lawyer said. Because it would be the first time that descendants of African slaves in America have been compensated in any way, fashion, or form from an American institution. Even though this is well-founded in property law, we would be naive to assume people won't see this as a reparations lawsuit. Like Lanier's case against Harvard,

Starting point is 00:08:14 Georgetown reminds us how much the United States benefited from slavery. While slavery may have been mostly relegated to the South, Northern industry and even cotton mills in Great Britain benefited from its existence. That's not even to mention the stranglehold of Jim Crow and segregation that lasted for a century longer. But is there a solution for this level of injustice? One solution that's been proposed is reparations.

Starting point is 00:08:33 And there are some parallels to other marginalized groups, even though their histories are each unique. The Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act allows for stolen Native American culture items to be returned to their tribes. Likewise, the US government passed a law compensating Japanese Americans who were interned during World War II with $20,000 each. But with the conversation of reparations for descendants of slaves, the practical question is how much it would cost. And that's basically unanswerable. How do you begin to calculate lost wages, time, violence, and inequality over hundreds of years? Nonetheless, Representative John Conyers has introduced a House resolution every year since

Starting point is 00:09:06 1989 to create a commission to study reparations proposals. But like the question of reparations, Professor Harris believes Lanier's case might not just be a function of the court system. I think that the legal system might not be the final word on it, just because I don't think there's actually going to be much satisfaction from there. Sometimes we imagine that the law, the court system can fix things. And I actually think that sometimes the fix is much more complicated than that. It's about our responsibilities as a society. It's about our responsibilities to each other. How do we think about things that happened in the past? So with

Starting point is 00:09:41 both Lanier's case against Harvard and the Georgetown referendum, we're gonna have to wait to see what actually happens. I mean, it's probably not likely that Lanier will win the case against Harvard, but that might not be what the case is really about. And when it comes to Georgetown, if the university approves the referendum, that would be completely unprecedented. But with all that said, like always,

Starting point is 00:09:58 it leaves us with questions to pass off to you. What do you think about everything we talked about? More specifically, what do you think about Lanier's case against Harvard? Do you think it's a legal challenge or more of a moral one really any and all of the things we talked about today I'd love to hear your thoughts on it in those comments down below also if you like this video you want to support the channel be sure to take a second just

Starting point is 00:10:14 hit that like button also if you know 100% filled in you can go check out more articles over at RogueRocket.com or check out the last two videos that you may have missed right here all you gotta do is click and tap but with that said of course as always thanks for watching. I love your face and I'll see you right here back on this channel with a brand new Philip DeFranco show later today.

The Philip DeFranco Show - MS 5.9 Why Harvard Is Being Sued Over This 169-Year-Old Slave Photo…

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