Youll never know where you came from, said Mlisande Short-Colomb, a descendant of the group of slaves, in a statement about the project. Meet Paul Haring, the CNS photographer who covered the resignation of Pope Benedict XVI and the election of Francis, numerous international papal trips and the daily action of Vatican life for over a decade. On June 19, 1838, the Maryland Province of the Society of Jesus agreed to sell 272 slaves to two southern Louisiana sugar planters, former governor Henry Johnson and Jesse Batey, for $115,000, equivalent to $2.79 million in 2020, in order to rescue Georgetown University from bankruptcy. It is better to prevent than to attempt to remedy. The university created the liturgy in partnership with members of the descendant community, the Archdiocese of Washington and the Society of Jesus in the United States. Moreover, men and women held in bondage were also part of the day-to-day operation of Georgetown College in its early decades. Patricia Bayonne-Johnson, a descendant of another of the slaves sold by the Jesuits, is the president of the Eastern Washington Genealogical Society in Spokane, Wash., which is helping to track the slaves and their families. Relationship Counseling - Marriage resources, Falling in Love Finding God Marriage and the Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius of Loyola, Sacred Heart Seminary and School of Theology, The problem of hatredand how Christians are contributing to it, Jesuit sex abuse expert appointed to Vatican office for child protection, Sin, hell and scrupulosity: How to repent during Lent (and how not to). Logging in will also give you access to commenting features on our website. Georgetown University in Washington, seen from across the Potomac River. He was valued at $900. The truth was closer to home than anyone knew", "272 Slaves Were Sold to Save Georgetown. The number of slaves transported to Louisiana (206) and the number left in Maryland (91) add up to 297, not 272, because some of the 272 slaves initially identified to be sold were substituted with replacements. [70], In 2019, undergraduate students at Georgetown voted in a non-binding referendum to impose a symbolic reparations fee of $27.20 per student. And they were sold, along with scores of others, to help secure the future of the premier Catholic institution of higher learning at the time, known today as Georgetown University. Ms. Crump, 69, has been asking herself that question, too. He demanded that Mulledy travel to Rome to answer the charges of disobeying orders and promoting scandal. Melvin Robert and Joya Mia Italiano look into Georgetown Universitys response on the Lip News. A Reflection for Friday of the First Week of Lent, by Jill Rice. Only 206 of the 272 slaves were actually delivered because the Jesuits permitted the elderly and those with spouses living nearby and not owned by Jesuits to remain in Maryland. IMPORTANT PRIVACY NOTICE & DISCLAIMER: YOU HAVE A RESPONSIBILITY TO USE CAUTION WHEN DISTRIBUTING PRIVATE INFORMATION. Key then transferred this property to John R. Thompson. Families would not be separated. The sale prompted immediate outcry from fellow Jesuits. In 2013, Georgetown began planning to renovate the adjacent Ryan, Mulledy, and Gervase Halls, which together served as the university's Jesuit residence until the opening of a new residence in 2003. However, the history of the sale and the Jesuits' slave ownership was never secret. Share. A Reader on Slavery, Memory, and Reconciliation A microcosm of the history of American slavery in a collection of the most important primary and secondary readings on slavery at Georgetown University and among the Maryland Jesuits Georgetown Universitys early history, closely tied to that of the Society of Jesus in Maryland, is a microcosm of the history of American slavery: the entrenchment of chattel slavery in the tobacco economy of the Chesapeake in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries; the contradictions of liberty and slavery at the founding of the United States; the rise of the domestic slave trade to the cotton and sugar kingdoms of the Deep South in the nineteenth century; the political conflict over slavery and its overthrow amid civil war; and slaverys persistent legacies of racism and inequality. After the sale, Cornelius vanishes from the public record until 1851 when his trail finally picks back up on a cotton plantation near Maringouin, La. [3], Much of this land was put to use as plantations, the revenue from which financed the Jesuits' ministries. [71] The university instead decided to raise $400,000 per year in voluntary donations for the benefit of descendants. This resulted in families being split for economic reasons with no consideration of human relationships. The remainder of the slaves were accounted for in three subsequent bills of sale executed in November 1838, which specified that 64 would go to Batey's plantation named West Oak in Iberville Parish and 140 slaves would be sent to Johnson's two plantations, Ascension Plantation (later known as Chatham Plantation) in Ascension Parish and another in Maringouin (Iberville Parish). In 1851, Thompson purchased the second half of Johnson's property, so that by the beginning of the Civil War, all the slaves sold by Mulledy to Johnson were owned by Thompson. More than a dozen universities including Brown, Columbia, Harvard and the University of Virginia have publicly recognized their ties to slavery and the slave trade. A fantastic research tool with video camera, navigation programs and so much more. [10], Due to these extensive landholdings, the Propaganda Fide in Rome had come to view the American Jesuits negatively, believing they lived lavishly like manorial lords. Georgetown University Archives The Jesuits had sold off individual slaves before. [29], Not all of the 272 slaves intended to be sold to Louisiana met that fate. Some slaves pleaded for rosaries as they were rounded up, praying for deliverance. But on this day, in the fall of 1838, no one was spared: not the 2-month-old baby and her mother, not the field hands, not the shoemaker and not Cornelius Hawkins, who was about 13 years old when he was forced onboard. That man, Thomas Mulledy, then the president of Georgetown University, had sold 272 slaves to pay off a massive debt strangling the university. The Rev. Consider the following list: Top 10 Countries with the Highest Prevalence of Modern Slavery (by slaves per 1000 residents) - Global Slavery Index 2018: North Korea - 104.6 (10.46%) Eritrea - 93 (9.3%) Burundi - 40 (4.0%) Central African Republic . Anne Marie Becraft Hall, formerly known as McSherry Hall and renamed Remembrance Hall two years ago, is named for a free woman of color who established a school in the town of Georgetown for black girls. Richard Cellini, the chief executive of a technology company and a Georgetown alumnus, hired eight genealogists to track down the slaves and their descendants. [12], One of the Maryland Jesuits' institutions, Georgetown College (later known as Georgetown University), also rented slaves. Behind her are sugar plantations and the sugar mill where her ancestors worked. Shoes and clothing were made in the North and shipped to be used by the enslaved people. Your email address will not be published. In 2017, Georgetown University held aday of remembranceduring which the president of the Jesuit order apologized to more than 100 descendants attending a contrition liturgy. Through the project, genealogists have discovered 8,425 descendants of enslaved people sold in 1838. [28], Anticipating that some of the Jesuit plantation managers who opposed the sale would encourage their slaves to flee, Mulledy, along with Johnson and a sheriff, arrived at each of the plantations unannounced to gather the first 51 slaves for transport. 51 slaves were to be sent to Alexandria, Virginia, then shipped to Louisiana. So Judy Riffel, one of the genealogists hired by Mr. Cellini, began following a chain of weddings and births, baptisms and burials. 2008 - 2023 INTERESTING.COM, INC. Its hard to know what could possibly reconcile a history like this, he said. A Jesuit reports on the slaves' religious life in Louisiana, 1848, Chatham Plantation, Ascension Parish, Louisiana. Inspiring Stories of Black History and Achievement, 272 Slaves Sold to Finance Georgetown University. American Ancestors announced the new GU272 Memory Project website on June 19, the anniversary of Juneteenth, the day in 1865 when some American slaves learned they had been freed. The Rev. [54] Despite the decades of scholarship on the subject, this revelation came as a surprise to many Georgetown University members,[48][55] and some criticized the retention of Mulledy's name on the building. Maxine Crump, 69, a descendant of one of the slaves sold by the Jesuits, in a Louisiana sugar cane field where researchers believe her ancestor once worked. [34] During the controversy, Mulledy fell into alcoholism. Some wrote emotional letters to Roothaan denouncing the morality of the sale. It is necessary to keep in mind that these people were free in their native country and enslaved once they got to America. To pay that debt, the Jesuits who ran the school, under the auspices of the Maryland Province of the Society of Jesus, sold 272 slaves -- the very people that helped build the school itself.. Drawing from campus-based research projects sponsored by the Association of American Colleges and Universities and the Center for Urban Education at the University of Southern California, this invaluable resource provides real-world steps that reinforce primary elements for examining equity in student achievement, while challenging educators to specifically focus on racial equity as a critical lens for institutional and systemic change. Many of them baptized Catholic, they were bought by planters to work. Colleges and universities have placed greater emphasis on education equity in recent years. [40] The remaining $17,000, equivalent to approximately $440,000 in 2021,[25] was used to offset part of Georgetown College's $30,000 of debt that had accrued during the construction of buildings during Mulledy's prior presidency of the college. The condition of slaves on the plantations varied over time, as did the condition of the Jesuits living with them. Her ancestors, once amorphous and invisible, are finally taking shape in her mind. Slaves were collateral and could be used to mortgage land and other goods. At Georgetown, slavery and scholarship were inextricably linked. in Fr. But priests at the Jesuit plantations recounted the panic and fear they witnessed when the slaves departed. Cardinal McElroy on radical inclusion for L.G.B.T. On June 19, 1838, the Maryland Province of the Society of Jesus agreed to sell 272 slaves to two Louisiana planters, Henry Johnson and Jesse Batey, for $115,000 (equivalent to approximately $2.96million in 2021). Today, the universitys leaders, students and alumni are grappling with how to confront that history. [21], Meanwhile, in order to fund the province's operations,[22] McSherry, as the first provincial superior of the Maryland Province,[17] began selling small groups of slaves to planters in Louisiana in 1835, arguing that it was not possible to sell the slaves to local planters and that the buyers had assured him that they would not mistreat the slaves and would permit them to practice their Catholic faith. Mr. Cellini is an unlikely racial crusader. (CNS photo/Tyler Orsburn) On Oct. 29, John J. DeGioia, president of Georgetown University, released a university-wide letter announcing that Georgetown would commit to raising around. In 1838, the Jesuit priests who ran the countrys top Catholic university needed money to keep it alive. Keynote || Radcliffe Institute WELCOME Lizabeth Cohen, Dean, Radcliffe Institute, and Howard Mumford Jones Professor of American Studies, Harvard University OPENING REMARKS (12:07) Drew Gilpin Faust, President and Lincoln Professor of History, Harvard University KEYNOTE (15:51) Ta-Nehisi Coates, Journalist; National Correspondent, the Atlantic: Author, Between the World and Me (Spiegel & Grau, 2015) and The Beautiful Struggle: A Father, Two Sons, and an Unlikely Road to Manhood (Spiegel & Grau, 2008) Conversation between Ta-Nehisi Coates and Drew Gilpin Faust (34:37).