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Title details for From These Roots by Tamara Lanier - Available

From These Roots

My Fight with Harvard to Reclaim My Legacy

by Tamara Lanier
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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.

  • Creators

  • Publisher

  • Release date

    January 28, 2025

  • Formats

    • Kindle Book

    • OverDrive Read

      • ISBN: 9780593727737

    • EPUB ebook

      • ISBN: 9780593727737
      • File size: 11574 KB

  • Languages

    • English

  • Reviews

    • Library Journal

      August 1, 2024

      Lanier, the plaintiff in a lawsuit against Harvard, details her family history and fight to win reparations from the university over their possession of daguerreotypes of her direct ancestors, Renty Taylor and his daughter Delia, two enslaved people who were forced to sit for the photographs by a Harvard professor who used those images to further the cause of white supremacy. Prepub Alert.

      Copyright 2024 Library Journal

      Copyright 2024 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

    • Kirkus

      January 15, 2025
      Battling on behalf of enslaved forebears. This inspiring memoir features unforgettable dialogue: "We're going to Columbia, South Carolina, to spend the weekend with the family who enslaved our ancestors!" So Lanier tells her daughters, announcing a remarkable development in a long campaign. Her goal: compel Harvard University to hand over images of her great-great-great grandfather Renty Taylor and his daughter Delia, enslaved in the 19th century and treated as "specimens" to be studied. Lanier's memoir begins in 2010, when she promises her dying mother that she'd chronicle her family's history. She serendipitously mentions the project to the owner of an ice cream shop near her Connecticut home. Turns out he's a "genealogical whiz." With his help, she discovers that Renty and Delia are among seven enslaved people seen in infamous daguerreotypes commissioned in 1850 by Louis Agassiz, a Harvard professor with repugnant white supremacist theories. Lanier informs Harvard of her lineage but is thwarted by "academic arrogance." Nevertheless, she persists. A phone call to the family that enslaved her relatives leads to a powerful moment, with Lanier "sitting in a chair hand-carved by" Prince Thompson, another ancestor. She also collaborates with descendants of Agassiz on a public appeal for Harvard to surrender the images, which the school published on a textbook cover and projected on a large screen at an academic conference, while denying similar requests from Lanier. Her 2019 lawsuit didn't force Harvard to give up the daguerreotypes, but in a decision by Massachusetts' highest court, justices cited strengths in Lanier's claim and ruled that she could sue Harvard for emotional distress. This "marked the first time," Lanier writes, "that a descendant" of enslaved people was "afforded the opportunity to seek accountability from an American institution for the atrocities caused by slavery." A stirring first-person account of holding powerful institutions responsible for abetting slavery.

      COPYRIGHT(2025) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

Formats

  • Kindle Book
  • OverDrive Read
  • EPUB ebook

subjects

Languages

  • English

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