In 1994, the conceptual artist Carrie Mae Weems created a poignant sequence of prints for Hidden Witness, a Getty Museum exhibition showcasing antebellum-period images of African Individuals. Utilizing images sourced from college and museum archives, Weems crafted a sequence that commented on the violence of images and the white gaze in American historical past. A few of the most distressing photographs had been copies of the Zealy daguerreotypes, the earliest identified photographs of enslaved folks. They had been commissioned within the 1850s by the Harvard zoologist Louis Agassiz, who hoped they might show the inferiority of African American folks. When Harvard came upon about Weems’ unauthorized use of the photographs, it threatened to sue her.
Harvard’s directors by no means went via with their swimsuit (when Weems invited them to take her to courtroom, they backed down and agreed to purchase her assortment as a substitute), however their assertion raised thorny questions on who owned the photographs. How might the college, which obtained these images with out consent from the individuals, declare them? What did it imply for them to aim to curtail a Black lady’s use of those photographs for creative expression? Free Renty: Lanier v. Harvard wrestles with a few of these questions and the implications of their solutions.
Free Renty: Lanier v. Harvard
The Backside Line
Passionate in its pursuit of ethical readability.
Directed by David Grubin, who has produced quite a few documentaries for PBS, Free Renty chronicles Tamara Lanier’s mission to sue Harvard for “wrongful seizure, possession and expropriation” of the daguerreotypes she says are photographs of her ancestors Renty and Delia. Lanier made headlines in 2019 after she filed a lawsuit in Massachusetts in opposition to the college. Her case sparked intense conversations concerning the images, their historical past and the college’s potential to proceed cashing in on their use. Free Renty appears past the headlines to contextualize Lanier’s quest to reclaim her inheritance and situates her journey inside a broader dialog about reparations.
The movie opens appropriately with a consideration of the daguerreotype of Renty. Lanier, her lawyer Benjamin Crump, his authorized group and students together with Tina Campt and Ta-Nehisi Coates analyze the picture, sharing their ideas on what Renty’s stern gaze intimates. The train humanizes Renty, establishing a story of survival and resolve. It additionally segues properly into Lanier’s story, which she tells viewers via voiceover.
Earlier than Lanier even knew the daguerreotypes existed, she knew about Renty, her great-great-great-grandfather, from her mom, who insisted rightly that Lanier and her siblings perceive their household historical past. Lanier’s mom didn’t want an important day to share, and would regale the kids with Renty anecdotes at any time when she felt known as to take action. College assignments, just like the one which Shonrael, Lanier’s daughter, talks about with the group of legal professionals, introduced good alternatives for deep dives into the household’s previous. She recollects how her grandmother (Lanier’s mom) instructed her to jot down a mini chapter e book concerning the historical past of the household for a easy household tree mission.
Grubin’s documentary neatly frames Lanier’s story throughout the context of the lawsuit. Her recollections are shared via interviews with the authorized group, who’re on a fact-finding mission to show Lanier’s relationship to Renty. Their job is made simpler because of Lanier’s intensive excavation into her household’s historical past.
Assembling an argument that may maintain up in courtroom proves to be the tougher job. Early within the movie, Preston Tisdale, one other of Lanier’s attorneys, assures her of their probabilities of successful. “We’ve the legislation, and we even have the ethical authority,” he says. “We might be bringing each these to bear, and the truth that we now have direct lineage between an enslaved African and his descendant is an element that I don’t assume they actually thought-about.” But hardly ever are ethical authority or the voices of Black folks taken critically in American courts. Whereas the documentary, with its pulsating rating and fascinating modifying selections, hints at triumph, Lanier’s case is much less clearly victorious.
The college, which refused to remark for the movie, doesn’t care about Lanier’s relationship to Renty. In truth, what’s clear all through this partaking documentary are the lengths to which the college will go to keep away from addressing the difficulty. Lanier started her pursuit in 2011, and despatched the college’s directors letters they ignored. Past Lanier’s household historical past, among the most compelling components of the documentary concern her group’s efforts to construct a case. The attorneys argue that the picture of Renty needs to be thought-about stolen property — a surefire solution to win, contemplating the seriousness with which the courts deal with property over, say, human beings.
The group, which incorporates Josh Koskoff, an lawyer who’s now representing the households of victims of the Sandy Hook shootings, constructs a lawsuit that doubles as a historical past lesson. They consider Lanier’s case when it comes to a wider historical past of reparations: What does this nation owe its Black residents? Reception to this query has modified considerably over time, and the documentary’s scholarly voices (Coates, whose 2014 Atlantic article “The Case for Reparations” reignited the dialog) do job of serving to viewers perceive why and the way.
Though Renty’s destiny continues to be being determined — earlier this month the Massachusetts Supreme Court docket heard Lanier’s case — Free Renty gives an everlasting lesson in how claims to sure histories have by no means been impartial territory.
