The North Fork Arts Center and Coming to the Table North Fork Chapter welcome Tamara Lanier for an exclusive presentation of her memoir, From These Roots: My Fight with Harvard to Reclaim My Legacy.

When Lanier sets out to do her genealogy, she discovers that her Papa Renty, a legend in her family’s lore, was the “Congo Renty” of an infamous set of daguerreotypes of enslaved Africans that the naturalist Louis Agassiz commissioned in 1851 to prove racial inferiority.  Lanier immediately reached out to Harvard’s Peabody Museum, where the artifacts reside, with her historic discovery, only to be rebuffed and dismissed–thus sparking a decade-long legal battle that could be the first reparations case ever awarded in the United States.

Join us for a reading followed by a conversation with Lanier and local journalist, Liz Welch who worked with Lanier on this stunning story, one that raises profound questions, including, ‘Who has the right to own the artifacts of America’s painful history?’

A signing will follow, and books will be available for purchase through Burton’s Books.

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