Tamara Lanier, of Norwich, Conn., who says the man is her family's patriarch, sued Harvard University on Wednesday, demanding that the school turn over the photo and pay damages. When her mother was dying in 2011, Lanier said, she made her daughter promise she would write those stories down. On Wednesday, Lanier sued Harvard University, which has 19th-century daguerreotypes — believed to be the earliest-known images of enslaved people in the United States — of a man and his daughter who she says are her ancestors. Harvard is profiting from those images, the lawsuit contends, and refuses to return them to the descendants. “I’m grateful for that because I know, based on the stories she shared with us, the fondness she had for Papa Renty,” Lanier said.

Source: Washington Post March 20, 2019 23:19 UTC