Fight over Renty and Delia, earliest photos of US slaves, sees Agassiz descendants team up against Harvard

CAMBRIDGE, Mass. – They grew up hearing stories about their brilliant Harvard professor ancestor, the luminary who discovered the Ice Age and the movement of glaciers.

For years, they ignored Louis Agassiz's other side – how he promoted a racist, now-debunked theory called polygenism to argue that African Americans were inferior to white people.

But now, amid a legal fight with Harvard over a set of photographs of slaves that Agassiz commissioned, descendants of the 19th-century professor are condemning their ancestor's actions, apologizing for them and teaming with descendants of Renty and daughter Delia, the photographed slaves.

They want Harvard to relinquish the photos to Tamara Lanier of Connecticut, a direct descendant of Renty who sued Harvard in March, arguing that the university profited off images that belong to her family. The Agassiz family backs another of the lawsuit's demands – unspecified reparations to be paid by the university.

"By stepping forward and owning my family connection to Louis Agassiz, I give voice to my belief that transforming out of the governing lie of white supremacy is both possible and necessary," said Marian Shaw Moore, a great-great-great granddaughter of Agassiz who resides in Minneapolis. "I want to be part of the healing of the wounds it has rendered."

Moore, her sister, Susanna McKean Moore, and Lanier spoke at a news conference Thursday outside Agassiz Hall on the Harvard campus Thursday, urging action from the school. They are among 43 Agassiz descendants who signed a letter asking the school to release the photos to Lanier.

"Now is the time to name, acknowledge and redress the harm done by Louis Agassiz," the letter reads.

Several Agassiz descendants, Lanier, her family and her legal team walked through steady rain to deliver the letter to the office of Harvard President Lawrence Bacow. Chants of "Free Renty!" broke out afterward. The two families – one black, one white – sang "We Shall Overcome" as they walked back across Harvard Yard.

Marian Shaw Moore said she learned about Lanier’s lawsuit against Harvard from media reports three months ago, adding that she received her story as "an invitation" to make a public stance.

"This feels like the beginning of an important and long overdue journey, and it is our hope that for Harvard, releasing the daguerreotypes of Ms. Lanier's ancestors will also be a beginning in the crucial work of deep reckoning and repair," she said.

Agassiz, a biologist, had the photos of Renty and Delia taken in March 1850 at a South Carolina studio to promote his racist theory about inferiority that Southern plantation owners used to defend slavery. In the photos, known as daguerreotypes, Renty and Delia were forced to strip naked, and they were photographed from several angles.

"Do we think that Renty and Delia consented to be part of a project to justify their own enslavement?" said Susanna McKean Moore, a psychologist in Oakland, California. "Of course not. Their images were stolen from them. He may have been good on ice and fish, but Agassiz's ideas were deadly when it came to black people."

Harvard sued:University allegedly profited from what are believed to be the earliest photos of American slaves

Lanier, who said she is the great-great-great granddaughter of Renty, accused the university of ignoring her requests to "stop licensing the pictures for the university's profit" and misrepresenting the ancestor she calls "Papa Renty."

"I'm eternally grateful to the Agassiz family," Lanier said, calling them a "woke family" that is socially conscious. "They are passionate. They are loving. They are kind, and they are driven to make the space we share a better place."

The suit was filed in Middlesex County Superior Court but was moved to federal court in Boston. Lanier seeks an unspecified amount of damages from Harvard.

The suit lays out eight different legal claims, including federal law over property rights, the Massachusetts law for the recovery of personal property and a separate state law about the unauthorized use of a name or picture for advertising purposes.

Josh Kustoff, one of Lanier's attorneys, said reparations from Harvard should be "a significant amount" that puts "action behind their words" about solving racial division in the country. "Those details remain," he said.

Harvard spokeswoman Rachael Dane said the university cannot comment on ongoing litigation, but Harvard "will continue to come to terms with and address its historic connection to slavery."

Dane said the photos are safe at Harvard, which she said strives to be an "ethical steward" of its historical objects. She pointed to "significant resources" at the Peabody Museum, where the daguerreotypes are housed, to help with the care and treatment of sensitive collections such as the Renty and Delia daguerreotypes.

She said the museum follows recommendations that the daguerreotypes be viewed in-person only twice a year because of their age and condition.

In recent years, Harvard leaders have publicly acknowledged the school's role in fostering slavery. University President Drew Faust said in a speech in 2016 that Harvard was "directly complicit" in America's system of racial bondage until slavery was abolished in Massachusetts in 1783. She said Harvard remained "indirectly involved through extensive financial and other ties" to slavery in the South.

The Agassiz descendants – who span several states and other countries such as Mexico, Colombia and Scotland and include Harvard graduates – said the school must do more.

"Harvard, we are here today to say we are late," said Susanna McKean Moore. "We are late in calling out our ancestor Louis Agassiz. We are late in calling out you, his institutional partner for hurting generations of black Americans with phony science and white-house prestige."

The photos taken in 1850 of Renty, Delia and 11 other slaves disappeared for more than a century but were rediscovered in 1976 in the attic of Harvard University's Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology.

One of the photos of Renty, showing him waist-up as he looks into the camera, has four decades later turned into an iconic image of slavery in the USA.

The image is on the cover of a 2017 book, "From Site to Sight: Anthropology, Photography and the Power of Imagery," published by the Peabody Museum and sold online by Harvard for $40.

Harvard said the photos, viewable by anyone, are in "the public domain."

Agassiz was considered one of the greatest biologists and geologists in the world in the mid-19th century. His record has become problematic over time. He was an opponent of Charles Darwin's theory of evolution, and in fiercely subscribing to polygenism, he held the erroneous belief that white people and African Americans came from different species.

The photos he commissioned in South Carolina were taken by J.T. Zealy. Agassiz published them a month later in an article titled "The Diversity of Origin of the Human Races."

Agassiz's legacy – and name – lives on at Harvard. He founded the school's Museum of Comparative Zoology, and his wife, Elizabeth Cary Agassiz, a Harvard researcher of natural history, was founder and the first president of Radcliffe College, now the Society for the Collegiate Instruction of Women.

In addition to Harvard's Agassiz Hall, a street in Cambridge is named after Agassiz, as is a Harvard theater, the Agassiz House.

"Does the University want to continue to gain from an image stolen from enslaved people?" the Agassiz descendants' letter says. "Until Harvard commits to redress the harm it wrought, complicity will continue to define and mar its legacy."

Reach Joey Garrison on Twitter @joeygarrison.

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Fight over Renty and Delia, earliest photos of US slaves, sees Agassiz descendants team up against Harvard