Free Renty: Lanier v. Harvard Documentary

The documentary film Free Renty tells a story of Tamara Lanier, an African American woman from Connecticut, determined to force Harvard University to give up possession of daguerreotypes of her great-great-great grandfather, an enslaved man named Renty.  The images were commissioned in 1850 by a Harvard professor to "prove" the superiority of the white race. The images remain emblematic of America's failure to acknowledge the cruelty of slavery, the racist science that supported it, and the white supremacy that continues to infect our society today.