Lanier first encountered her enslaved ancestor’s 1850 daguerreotype through a 1995 scholarly article.

Evidence

I opened the email and read his note, which said he had found a few things on the internet that he believed were about my Papa Renty. … The first attachment was a scholarly article published in the journal American Art in 1995 called “Black Bodies, White Science: Louis Agassiz Slave Daguerreotypes.” … I clicked to the next page and the picture that filled my screen took my breath away. A beautiful, regal dark-skinned man with short-cropped silver hair and chiseled cheekbones was staring at me. His eyes locked with mine, as if he had been waiting for this very moment. … “Oh my god,” I thought. “It’s Papa Renty.” — Tamara Lanier, From These Roots, 135

Categorization

• QUESTION: The 1995 American Art article ‘Black Bodies, White Science’ - who wrote it, and did Harvard ever engage with its framing of the images as contested property?