Lanier dated her replevin demand to the 2017 conference, not her 2011 letter

Evidence

Back in 2014, I was still in conversation with Drew Gilpin Faust, the Peabody Museum, and other professors at Harvard, including Charles Ogletree. At that time I was still anticipating that the university would keep me informed on how they intended to use Renty’s and Delia’s images—as Faust had indicated in all of her correspondence. It was not until the Universities and Slavery: Bound by History conference in 2017 that I realized that Harvard was knowingly misrepresenting the truth about my relationship to Renty. That was when I wrote to Faust to make my request that the university surrender the daguerreotypes to me and my family. And so according to the law of replevin, I had three years from that moment to file my complaint. — Tamara Lanier, From These Roots, 1169

Categorization

• FICTION: The 2011-versus-2017 dispute over when a ‘demand’ legally occurred is itself the engine of the statute-of-limitations fight.