Harvard University will relinquish the earliest known images of enslaved people in the United States, ending a decades-long quest by the great-great-great-granddaughter of the enslaved people to regain possession of the daguerreotypes, lawyers said Wednesday.

Tamara Lanier, who lives in Connecticut, sued the university in Middlesex Superior Court in 2019 to reclaim the images of her ancestors, Renty Taylor and his daughter Delia, after years of resistance from university leaders.

In 2022, the state Supreme Judicial Court ruled Lanier could not claim ownership of the images , but she could sue Harvard for emotional distress suffered from the university’s display of them as part of the litigation.

“This landmark settlement is not just a victory for my family, but a victory of every desc

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