By Esther Claudette Gittens| Editorial credit: 365 Focus Photography / Shutterstock.com

In the annals of American history, the story of Renty Taylor and his daughter Delia serves as a harrowing testament to the brutality of slavery and the insidious ways in which academic institutions participated in and perpetuated racist ideologies. Forced to disrobe for photographs commissioned in 1850 by renowned Harvard professor Louis Agassiz for a study designed to prove Black inferiority, their images, stripped of dignity and consent, have become a focal point in reckoning with Harvard University’s deeply problematic racial past. This incident is not an isolated stain but rather a stark example within a broader, systemic history of racism embedded within one of America’s most prestigious universities.

Renty and Delia were enslaved on a South Carolina plantation when Agassiz, a proponent of polygenism – the pseudoscientific theory that human races originated from different ancestral lines and were therefore inherently unequal – sought to use their likenesses as visual “evidence.” The daguerreotypes, capturing them from various angles, often partially or fully nude, were intended to catalogue supposed physiological differences that would bolster Agassiz’s claims of a racial hierarchy with white Europeans at its apex. These images, born of coercion and exploitation, were meant to scientifically validate the subjugation of Black people. The very act of their creation was an assertion of power and a profound violation, reducing individuals to mere specimens for a racist intellectual pursuit. For Renty and Delia, the experience was undoubtedly one of humiliation and dehumanization, their bodies and identities commandeered for a cause that sought to legitimize their enslavement.

The recent legal battle waged by Tamara Lanier, a descendant of Renty Taylor, brought their story to the forefront of contemporary discourse. Lanier’s fight to reclaim these images from Harvard’s Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology, where they were held for over a century, culminated in a landmark settlement in May 2025. Harvard agreed to relinquish ownership of the photographs, which are now slated to be transferred to the International African American Museum in Charleston, South Carolina. This victory, while significant for Lanier and the memory of her ancestors, also forced a renewed public examination of Harvard’s role in the horrific chapter of scientific racism.

Louis Agassiz, a celebrated naturalist of his time, lent the considerable weight of his Harvard affiliation to theories that provided intellectual cover for slavery and, later, Jim Crow segregation. His work on polygenism, actively promoted during his tenure at Harvard, contributed to a climate of “race science” that had devastating and long-lasting consequences. The university, by providing him a platform and resources, became complicit in the dissemination of these harmful ideas.

However, Agassiz’s study is but one thread in the complex tapestry of Harvard’s racist past. The 2022 “Report of the Presidential Committee on Harvard & the Legacy of Slavery” laid bare the institution’s extensive and direct ties to slavery. The report revealed that Harvard leaders, faculty, and staff enslaved more than 70 individuals of African and Native American descent during the 17th and 18th centuries. These enslaved people served Harvard presidents, cared for students, and maintained the very infrastructure of the burgeoning university. Figures like Harvard’s first schoolmaster, Nathaniel Eaton, and early university presidents Increase Mather and Benjamin Wadsworth were all slaveholders.

Beyond the direct enslavement of individuals, Harvard’s financial prosperity was significantly intertwined with the slave economy. The report detailed how, during the first half of the 19th century, a substantial portion – over one-third – of private donations and financial pledges to the university came from five men whose fortunes were derived from slavery and slave-produced goods. Industries such as sugar, cotton, and the transatlantic slave trade itself fueled the wealth that, in part, built Harvard. This financial reliance on an exploitative and brutal system highlights an institutional complicity that extended far beyond the theoretical justifications of figures like Agassiz.

Furthermore, Harvard’s intellectual and academic environment fostered and legitimized racist ideas for centuries. Even after the abolition of slavery, prominent Harvard figures continued to promote eugenics and other forms of scientific racism. For instance, John Collins Warren, a founder of Massachusetts General Hospital and the first dean of Harvard Medical School, actively taught the supposed inferiority of Black people. These teachings, emanating from one of the nation’s leading academic institutions, provided a veneer of scientific credibility to discriminatory practices and policies.

The legacy of racism at Harvard also manifested in discriminatory practices against its own students. In the early 20th century, under President A. Lawrence Lowell (1909-1933), Harvard implemented exclusionary housing policies that barred Black students from freshman dormitories. This decision, made to appease white Southern students, sparked national controversy and demonstrated the university’s willingness to capitulate to racist pressures, thereby undermining its stated ideals of justice and equality. Despite a rhetorical commitment to openness, the number of Black students remained exceedingly low for decades, with records showing an average of only about three Black men attending Harvard per year between 1890 and 1940.

The story of Renty Taylor and Delia, therefore, is not merely an anecdote of a bygone era. It is a powerful symbol of Harvard’s historical entanglement with the ideologies and practices of racial oppression. The forced photographs, Agassiz’s racist science, the university’s financial gains from slavery, the direct enslavement of individuals by its leaders, and the discriminatory treatment of its students all paint a picture of an institution whose past is deeply marked by racism.

While Harvard has in recent years taken steps to acknowledge this history, including the publication of the 2022 report and the establishment of the Harvard & the Legacy of Slavery Initiative, the journey toward a full reckoning and reparative justice is ongoing. The relinquishing of the daguerreotypes of Renty and Delia is a significant step, but the shadows of their exploitation, and that of countless others, loom large. Their story, and the broader history it represents, demands continued examination and a commitment to ensuring that such institutional failings are never repeated, and that the enduring impact of this racist past is actively addressed. The scars left by these historical injustices are not easily erased, and the pursuit of truth and reconciliation remains a critical task for Harvard and for the nation as a whole.

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