‘Free Renty: Lanier v. Harvard’: Film Review

In 1994, the conceptual artist Carrie Mae Weems created a poignant series of prints for Hidden Witness, a Getty Museum exhibition showcasing antebellum-period photographs of African Americans. Using photographs sourced from university and museum archives, Weems crafted a series that commented on the violence of photography and the white gaze in American history. Some of the most distressing images were copies of the Zealy daguerreotypes, the earliest known images of enslaved people. They were commissioned in the 1850s by the Harvard zoologist Louis Agassiz, who hoped they would prove the inferiority of African American people. When Harvard found out about Weems’ unauthorized use of the images, it threatened to sue her.

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Harvard’s administrators never went through with their suit (when Weems invited them to take her to court, they backed down and agreed to buy her collection instead), but their assertion raised thorny questions about who owned the images. How could the university, which obtained these photographs without consent from the participants, claim them? What did it mean for them to attempt to curtail a Black woman’s use of these images for artistic expression? Free Renty: Lanier v. Harvard wrestles with some of these questions and the implications of their answers.

Directed by David Grubin, who has produced numerous 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 images of her ancestors Renty and Delia. Lanier made headlines in 2019 after she filed a lawsuit in Massachusetts against the university. Her case sparked intense conversations about the photographs, their history and the university’s ability to continue profiting from their use. Free Renty looks beyond the headlines to contextualize Lanier’s quest to reclaim her inheritance and situates her journey within a broader conversation about reparations.

The film opens appropriately with a consideration of the daguerreotype of Renty. Lanier, her lawyer Benjamin Crump, his legal team and scholars including Tina Campt and Ta-Nehisi Coates analyze the image, sharing their thoughts on what Renty’s stern gaze intimates. The exercise humanizes Renty, establishing a narrative of survival and resolve. It also segues nicely into Lanier’s story, which she tells viewers through voiceover.

Before Lanier even knew the daguerreotypes existed, she knew about Renty, her great-great-great-grandfather, from her mother, who insisted rightly that Lanier and her siblings understand their family history. Lanier’s mother did not need a special occasion to share, and would regale the children with Renty anecdotes whenever she felt called to do so. School assignments, like the one that Shonrael, Lanier’s daughter, talks about with the team of lawyers, presented perfect opportunities for deep dives into the family’s past. She recalls how her grandmother (Lanier’s mother) instructed her to write a mini chapter book about the history of the family for a simple family tree project.

Grubin’s documentary smartly frames Lanier’s story within the context of the lawsuit. Her memories are shared through interviews with the legal team, who are on a fact-finding mission to prove Lanier’s relationship to Renty. Their job is made easier thanks to Lanier’s extensive excavation into her family’s history.

Assembling an argument that will hold up in court proves to be the more difficult task. Early in the film, Preston Tisdale, another of Lanier’s attorneys, assures her of their chances of winning. “We have the law, and we also have the moral authority,” he says. “We will be bringing both those to bear, and the fact that we have direct lineage between an enslaved African and his descendant is a factor that I don’t think they really considered.” Yet rarely are moral authority or the voices of Black people taken seriously in American courts. While the documentary, with its pulsating score and engaging editing choices, hints at triumph, Lanier’s case is less clearly victorious.

The university, which refused to comment for the film, does not care about Lanier’s relationship to Renty. In fact, what’s clear throughout this engaging documentary are the lengths to which the university will go to avoid addressing the issue. Lanier began her pursuit in 2011, and sent the school’s administrators letters they ignored. Beyond Lanier’s family history, some of the most compelling parts of the documentary concern her team’s efforts to build a case. The attorneys argue that the image of Renty should be considered stolen property — a surefire way to win, considering the seriousness with which the courts treat property over, say, human beings.

The team, which includes Josh Koskoff, an attorney who’s now representing the families of victims of the Sandy Hook shootings, constructs a lawsuit that doubles as a history lesson. They think about Lanier’s case in terms of a wider history of reparations: What does this country owe its Black citizens? Reception to this question has changed significantly over the years, and the documentary’s scholarly voices (Coates, whose 2014 Atlantic article “The Case for Reparations” reignited the conversation) do a good job of helping viewers understand why and how.

Although Renty’s fate is still being decided — earlier this month the Massachusetts Supreme Court heard Lanier’s case — Free Renty offers an enduring lesson in how claims to certain histories have never been neutral territory.