Renty Taylor

Renty Taylor (c. 1775 – after c. 1866), also known as Papa Renty, was a man born in the Congo Basin. He was captured and brought to the United States, where he was sold as a slave. He worked on a cotton plantation owned by Benjamin Franklin Taylor (1791-1852). He was one of the subjects of the oldest known photographs of slaves, which were taken in March 1850 by Joseph T. Zealy under the supervision of Harvard biologist Louis Agassiz, whose ideas were used to support the enslavement of Africans in the United States and promote the now-discredited theory of scientific racism.

Renty Taylor was born around 1775 in the Congo Basin; his birth name is unknown.^[1] He was captured by slave traders and arrived in New Orleans on a Spanish slave ship around 1800.^[1] He was eventually purchased by Col. Thomas Taylor (1743–1833)^[2] during the early 1800s and he eventually made his way to the Edgehill plantation at Columbia, South Carolina.^[3] Using a Webster’s Blue Back Speller, he taught himself and other slaves how to read, despite anti-literacy laws in the United States.^[1]

In March 1850, Louis Agassiz commissioned daguerreotypes of Renty Taylor and his daughter Delia Taylor.^[4] These are the earliest known photographs of enslaved people in the United States.^[5][6][4][7] Agassiz left the images to Harvard University, and they remained at the Peabody Museum until 1976 when they were re-discovered by Ellie Reichlin.

In 1852, Renty and his daughter's names appeared on a probate inventory of Benjamin Franklin Taylor's slaves.^[8] He eventually took on the name Renty Taylor sometime after the end of the American Civil War.^[1] It is unknown when he died and it is also unknown if he was ever freed, although he disappeared from records around 1866, which was three years after Abraham Lincoln had passed the Emancipation Proclamation.

Renty Taylor had two known children: a daughter named Delia Taylor and a son named Renty Thompson (1850–1945) who was sold to a different slave owner in 1860.^[9]

In 2019, Taylor's descendants sued Harvard for the return of the images and unspecified damages.^[10] The lawsuit was supported by forty-three living descendants of Louis Agassiz, they wrote a letter of support that read in part "For Harvard to give the daguerreotypes to Ms. Lanier and her family would begin to make amends for its use of the photos as exhibits for the white supremacist theory Agassiz espoused”, and that everyone must evaluate fully "his role in promoting a pseudoscientific justification for white supremacy."^[5] Asked what she would do with the images if she won the case, Tamara Lanier, Renty Taylor's great-great-great-granddaughter stated: "I know that this is something that should be in the public domain, and Harvard should not be profiting from the use of these images, and beyond that, it's a matter of dignity and restoring the dignity to Renty."^[5]

Lanier v. Harvard was dismissed in 2021, on multiple grounds, including the common law principle that the subject of a photograph holds no property rights in the photo.^[11][12] Lanier appealed shortly afterwards.^[12]

In May 2025, Harvard agreed to give the daguerrotypes to the International African American Museum in South Carolina. Ms. Lanier was paid an undisclosed sum of money as part of her lawsuit. Despite the undisclosed monetary settlement, Harvard maintains its position that Ms. Lanier has not proven her genealogical connection to Renty Taylor.^[13] The photographs were finally transferred to the International African American Museum on 11 March 2026.^[14]

• The World Is Watching: Woman Suing Harvard for Photos of Enslaved Ancestors Says History Is At Stake (Video-Interview with Tamara Lanier, the great-great-great-granddaughter of Papa Renty), Democracy Now!, 29 March 2019