Book Talk: Tamara Lanier’s Fight with Harvard to #FreeRenty
Activist Tamara Lanier will join Hyperallergic’s Hrag Vartanian in a conversation about From These Roots, her new book describing her struggle with Harvard University regarding its ownership and control over images of her great-great-great grandfather Renty Taylor and his daughter Delia, both of whom were photographed as part of a Harvard professor’s racist research. These searing, painful images are infamous documents of scientific racism and the dehumanizing work of slavery in the past and in the present. Lanier asks who owns these images given the total absence of consent in their production? What does the work of undoing slavery’s legacies actually look like? From These Roots raises important questions about the work of reparation, and the decolonization of museums and archives.
Renty and Delia’s names are heralded on banners made by the artist Cauleen Smith, on view in the entrance of ICA LA as a part of the exhibition Scientia Sexualis.
This event is produced in a partnership between ICA LA and Hyperallergic.
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Tamara K. Lanier is a tireless champion for truth and justice whose advocacy has taken her across Connecticut, the nation, and the globe. A 27-year veteran of the State of Connecticut Judicial Branch, Lanier retired in 2017 as Chief Probation Officer II in the Norwich Probation Office. She has a long and distinguished record of public service and social advocacy. Recently, she was appointed by Governor Ned Lamont to Connecticut’s first Hate Crime Advisory Council.
Recognized for her dedication to justice, Lanier was named Woman of the Year in 2015 by the Connecticut General Assembly’s Commission on Afro-American Affairs. In 2016, she received the Connecticut Commission of Human Rights and Opportunities’ Leaders and Legends Award and was honored with the Inspirational Women’s Award in 2019. Lanier has passionately advocated for a national dialogue on slavery’s enduring impact on society. Her advocacy has led to meetings with such dignitaries as Congressman John Lewis and Con …
One woman’s unrelenting mission to reclaim her ancestors’ history and honor their lineage pits her against one of the country’s most powerful institutions: Harvard University
Tamara Lanier grew up listening to her mother’s stories about her ancestors. As Black Americans descended from enslaved people brought to America, they knew all too well how fragile the tapestry of a lineage could be. As her mother’s health declined, she pushed her daughter to dig into those stories. “Tell them about Papa Renty,” she would say. It was her mother’s last wish.
Thus begins one woman’s remarkable commitment to document that story. Her discovery of a nineteenth-century daguerreotype at Harvard University’s Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology, one of the first-ever photos of enslaved people from Africa, reveals a dark-skinned man with short-cropped silver hair and chiseled cheekbones. The information read “Renty, Congo.” All at once, Lanier knew she was staring at the ancestor her mother told her so much about—Papa Renty.
In a compelling account covering more than a decade of her own research, Lanier takes us on her quest to prove her genealogical bloodline to Papa Renty’s that pits her in a legal battle against Harvard and its army of lawyers. The question is, who has claim to the stories, artifacts, and remnants of America’s stained history—the institutions who acquired and housed them for generations, or the descendants who have survived?
From These Roots is not only a historical record of one woman’s lineage but a call to justice that fights for all those demanding to reclaim, honor, and lay to rest the remains of mishandled lives and memories.
– Penguin Random House
