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From These Roots: My Fight with Harvard to Reclaim My Legacy Audiobook
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One woman’s unrelenting mission to reclaim her ancestors’ history and honor their lineage pits her against one of the country’s most powerful institutions: Harvard University
Tamara Lanier grew up listening to her mother’s stories about her ancestors. As Black Americans descended from enslaved people brought to America, they knew all too well how fragile the tapestry of a lineage could be. As her mother’s health declined, she pushed her daughter to dig into those stories. "Tell them about Papa Renty," she would say. It was her mother’s last wish.
Thus begins one woman’s remarkable commitment to document that story. Her discovery of a nineteenth-century daguerreotype at Harvard University’s Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology, one of the first-ever photos of enslaved people from Africa, reveals a dark-skinned man with short-cropped silver hair and chiseled cheekbones. The information read “Renty, Congo.” All at once, Lanier knew she was staring at the ancestor her mother told her so much about—Papa Renty.
In a compelling account covering more than a decade of her own research, Lanier takes us on her quest to prove her genealogical bloodline to Papa Renty’s that pits her in a legal battle against Harvard and its army of lawyers. The question is, who has claim to the stories, artifacts, and remnants of America’s stained history—the institutions who acquired and housed them for generations, or the descendants who have survived?
From These Roots is not only a historical record of one woman’s lineage but a call to justice that fights for all those demanding to reclaim, honor, and lay to rest the remains of mishandled lives and memories.
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"In 1976, the same year Alex Haley published Roots, Ellie Reichlin at Harvard’s Peabody Museum unearthed a stunning 1850 image of an elderly African named Renty, enslaved in South Carolina. A half century later, this impassioned work by a dedicated descendant brings Renty and his lineage back to life, offering a disturbing and provocative window into four centuries of American history."
— Peter H. Wood, author of Strange New Land
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In the tradition of Sojourner Truth, From These Roots is the riveting and moving story of one woman's crusade for simple justice on behalf of her beloved ancestors.
— Jill Abramson, former executive editor, The New York Times -
Lanier’s story is at once moving, surprising, and infuriating. Academics like myself should read it with humility to realize how many paths to knowledge can be found outside what in this case must be called the ivory tower.
— Nicholas Mirzoeff, author of White Sight; professor and chair in the Department of Media, Culture, and Communication at NYU -
Tamara Lanier’s quest to repatriate Papa Renty, an ancestor she discovered in a rare daguerreotype from 1850, unsettles many premises of common conversations around photography, museum collections and academic institutions . . . A must-read book to anyone who cares about justice in an unjust world.
— Ariella Azoulay, professor of Modern Culture and Media at Brown University -
From These Roots is a gripping account of Lanier’s righteous search for the personal history behind the haunting daguerreotypes of Renty and Delia, hostages to the original sin of a nation. As Lanier uncovers her origins, she stands up to one of America’s most powerful institutions and demands restitution.
— Anne-Marie O’Connor, author of The Lady in Gold -
From These Roots gives us a powerful heroic saga, at once haunting and inspiring, with an institutional villain as dark as any monster found in classic myth. Lanier guides us on a journey to fulfill a death bed pledge to her mother to write the family oral history, passed down across generations; a story that mirrors and echoes the entirety of American history.
— Dr. David Harris, Emeritus Managing Director, Charles Hamilton Houston Institute for Race and Justice at Harvard Law School -
In this deeply personal, compelling American story, Tamara Lanier shows what we must learn: that slavery’s afterlife is real and confronting it while seeking reparative justice, remains America’s unfinished business.
— Dr. Bernard Powers, director of the Center for the Study of Slavery in Charleston -
In From These Roots, Tamara Lanier shares her unrelenting battle to own her family history and heritage. Her story offers an inspiring and timely lesson in never giving up.
— Linda Villarosa, Pulitzer Prize finalist and author of Under the Skin -
From These Roots . . . compels us to face the painful truth that America’s past cannot be divorced from its present. It’s a must-read for those who believe in Justice.
— Attorney Ben Crump
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