Tamara Lanier

Salons at Stowe

Tamara Lanier's Fight to Free Her Ancestors from Harvard's Archives

February 6, 2020

**The Salon with Tamara Lanier is fully reserved**
**Registration is now closed**

Join the Harriet Beecher Stowe Center as we welcome Norwich resident Tamara Lanier for a discussion about her ongoing lawsuit with Harvard University over a collection of photographs depicting her ancestors and enslaved Africans, Renty and Delia. The photographs are part of a larger collection commissioned in 1850 by Harvard professor and naturalist Dr. Louis Agassiz to strengthen his theories on racism and white superiority.

Lanier’s story and subsequent lawsuit reached international attention last March and while the complex case remains in the court system, we continue to grapple with our sordid history of slavery in the United States, our thoughts about reparations for the descendants of slaves, family ties, and who are the owners of history.

Lanier will be joined by CCSU faculty and members of the Center for Africana Studies.

“My mother often told about our legacy. It was about an African pride, pride in who they were, about a legacy of literacy, of education, of religion.” ~ Tamara Lanier

Location Harriet Beecher Stowe Center / Visitor Center / 77 Forest St / Hartford

Doors Open 5:30

Program 5:30 - 7:00 pm

School Group Interest Form

School Group Interest Form 2024

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Adult Group Interest Form

Group Tour Interest Form 2022

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Isabella Beecher Hooker

Isabella Holmes Beecher Hooker (1822-1907)
An ardent member of the woman’s suffrage movement, Isabella Holmes Beecher Hooker joined in the cause along with Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony.

Isabella was the first child of Lyman Beecher and his second wife, Harriet Porter Beecher.

Isabella began her education at Catharine Beecher’s Hartford Female Seminary and lived with her sister Mary Perkins. In 1841 she married John Hooker, a descendant of Thomas Hooker, the founder of Hartford. John Hooker was a lawyer and an abolitionist.

In the early 1860s Isabella got involved in the woman’s suffrage movement. Isabella joined Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony as a member of the National Woman’s Suffrage Association in 1869. She was a founding member of the Connecticut Woman’s Suffrage Association. Isabella’s ideas of equality were influenced by John Stuart Mills’ On Liberty and the Subjection of Women.

In 1871, Isabella organized the annual convention of the National Woman’s Suffrage Association in Washington D.C. and presented her argument before the Committee on the Judiciary of the United States Senate. Her husband, John Hooker, believed in his wife and supported her activities. He helped Isabella draft a bill to the Connecticut Legislature giving married women the same property rights as their husbands. The bill passed in 1877. Isabella annually submitted a bill granting women the right to vote, but it did not pass in her lifetime.