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March 21, 2019

Lawsuit Charges Harvard with Profiting from Photos of Enslaved People
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And in Massachusetts, the descendant of two enslaved people who were
captured in mid-19th century photographs has sued Harvard, accusing the
university of unfairly profiting from their images. Tamara Lanier of
Connecticut argues in a lawsuit filed Wednesday that she and other
descendants of Renty and Delia-two people held in bondage 169 years
ago-should hold the rights to their photographs, not Harvard. Renty and
Delia were forced to pose for the photographs in 1850 by a Harvard
professor. Their images were used in a recent Harvard conference titled
"Universities and Slavery: Bound by History." This comes after
administrators at Harvard and other elite universities have admitted the
schools were founded largely through the labor of enslaved African
people and profits generated by the slave trade.


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