[12], One of the Maryland Jesuits' institutions, Georgetown College (later known as Georgetown University), also rented slaves. While the plantations were initially worked by indentured servants, as the institution of indentured servitude began to fade away in Maryland, African slaves replaced indentured servants as the primary workers on the plantations. A Reflection for Friday of the First Week of Lent, by Jill Rice. The Rev. Having descendant voices present alongside historical documents is an essential part of the GU272 narrative, said Claire Vail, the projects director for American Ancestors, in an announcement about the website. Now students, professors and alumni want to know what happened to those men and women and what the university will do moving forward. Youll never know where you came from, said Mlisande Short-Colomb, a descendant of the group of slaves, in a statement about the project. There is no indication that he received any response. The 1970s saw an increase in public scholarship on the Maryland Jesuits' slave ownership. Some tips for making the most of your twilight years. [72][70] Georgetown also made a $1million donation to the foundation and a $400,000 donation to create a charitable fund to pay for healthcare and education in Maringouin, Louisiana. While it would seem as if there would be some mention of this in history, it remained largely unknown. When the Society of Jesus was suppressed worldwide by Pope Clement XIV in 1773, ownership of the plantations was transferred from the Jesuits' Maryland Mission to the newly established Corporation of Roman Catholic Clergymen. Georgetown is not the first or only university to own slaves. June 1838 the University benefited from the sale of 272 slaves, some as young as 2 months old to finance the ailing institution. Moreover, men and women held in bondage were also part of the day-to-day operation of Georgetown College in its early decades. if you are trying to comment, you must log in or set up a new account. But the revelations about her lineage and the church she grew up in have unleashed a swirl of emotions. To see the posts, click here. Examined and found correct, he wrote of Cornelius and the 129 other people he found on the ship. They could then make 40% on the labor of the slave and pay the bank 8%. Father Van de Velde begged Jesuit leaders to send money for the construction of a church that would provide for the salvation of those poor people, who are now utterly neglected.. This sale was overseen by Provincial Superior William McSherry and Friar Thomas Mulledy. [70], The Corporation of Roman Catholic Clergymen was created in 1792 to preserve the property of the. However, the history of the sale and the Jesuits' slave ownership was never secret. [51] Other historians covered the subject in literature published between the 1980s and 2000s. Central concepts and key points are illustrated through campus examples. What has emerged from their research, and that of other scholars, is a glimpse of an insular world dominated by priests who required their slaves to attend Mass for the sake of their salvation, but also whipped and sold some of them. In 1996, the Jesuit Plantation Project was established by historians at Georgetown, which made available to the public via the internet digitized versions of much of the Maryland Jesuits' archives, including the articles of agreement for the 1838 sale. We also posted a 5 part mini-series on the 100th anniversary of one of the most horrific massacres in the history of America. In November, the university agreed to remove the names of the Rev. 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,[27] Ascension Plantation (later known as Chatham Plantation) in Ascension Parish and another in Maringouin in Iberville Parish. It lists the slaves by name according to plantation where they lived, identifies family groups, and records which ship (1, 2, or 3) they were shipped in. [35][34] Benedict Fenwick, the Bishop of Boston, privately lamented the fate of the slaves and considered the sale an extreme measure. 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. [19] At the congregation, the senior Jesuits in Maryland voted six to four to proceed with a sale of the slaves,[20] and Dubuisson submitted to the Superior General a summary of the moral and financial arguments on either side of the debate. Now shes working for justice. [70], In 2019, undergraduate students at Georgetown voted in a non-binding referendum to impose a symbolic reparations fee of $27.20 per student. The church records helped lead to a 69-year-old woman in Baton Rouge named Maxine Crump. We ask readers to log in so that we can recognize you as a registered user and give you unrestricted access to our website. [39], While Roothaan ordered that the proceeds of the sale be used to provide for the training of Jesuits, the initial $25,000 was not used for that purpose. Articles in the Woodstock Letters, an internal Jesuit publication that later became accessible to the public, routinely addressed both subjects during the course of its existence from 1872 to 1969. CNN In 1838, the Jesuits who ran Georgetown University sold 272 enslaved people to pay off the university's debts. [137] Thomas C. Hindman (1828-1868), American politician and Confederate general. Thomas Lilly reported. The ship manifest of the Katharine Jackson, available in full at the. We encourage you to use these links as we receive a small royalty paid by the partner allowing you to help us without cost to you. However, the remainder of the money received did go to funding Jesuit formation. He was about 48 then, a father, a husband, a farm laborer and, finally, a free man. This admissions preference has been described by historian Craig Steven Wilder as the most significant measure recently taken by a university to account for its historical relationship with slavery. Ta-Nehisi Coates, National Correspondent, The Atlantic Recorded Thursday, September 29, 2016, at the Washington Ideas Forum. The Re-Enslavement of Black Americans from the Civil War to World War II An astonishing book. It is necessary to keep in mind that these people were free in their native country and enslaved once they got to America. [53], With work complete, in August 2015, university president John DeGioia sent an open letter to the university announcing the opening of the new student residence, which also related Mulledy's role in the 1838 slave sale after stepping down as president of the university. -- Georgetown University has announced that descendants of 272 slaves, from whose sale the school profited in 1838, will receive "an advantage in the admissions process" as part of a larger . He was allowed to continue paying well beyond the ten years initially allowed, and continued to do so until just before the Emancipation Proclamation in 1862, during the Civil War. Required fields are marked *. Expanding Practitioner Knowledge for Racial Justice in Higher Education From Equity Talk to Equity Walk offers practical guidance on the design and application of campus change strategies for achieving equitable outcomes. Other slaves were sold locally in Maryland so that they would not be separated from their spouses who were either free or owned by non-Jesuits, in compliance with Roothaan's order. This indispensable guide presents academic administrators and staff with advice on building an equity-minded campus culture, aligning strategic priorities and institutional missions to advance equity, understanding equity-minded data analysis, developing campus strategies for making excellence inclusive, and moving from a first-generation equity educator to an equity-minded practitioner. The sale prompted immediate outcry from fellow Jesuits. 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. [34] Many Maryland Jesuits were outraged by the sale, which they considered to be immoral, and many of them wrote graphic, emotional accounts of the sale to Roothaan. Shoes and clothing were made in the North and shipped to be used by the enslaved people. They also established schools on their lands. Check out some of the. Join Amazon Prime Watch Thousands of Movies & TV Shows Anytime . A few priests expressed qualms about the morality of human trafficking to Jesuit authorities, although most were concerned with the threat a heavily Protestant South would undoubtedly present to the slaves Catholic faith, it reads. [48] In 1977, the Maryland Province named Georgetown's Lauinger Library as the custodian of its historic archives, which were made available to the public through the Georgetown University Library, Saint Louis University Library, and Maryland State Library. [27] The agreement provided that 51 slaves would be sent to the port of Alexandria, Virginia in order to be shipped to Louisiana. Leave a message for others who see this profile. She was the citys first black woman television anchor. He listened . [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. [72] In 2021, the Jesuit Conference of Canada and the United States pledged to raise $100million for a newly created Descendants Truth and Reconciliation Foundation, which would aim to ultimately raise $1billion, with the purpose of working for the benefit of descendants of all slaves owned by the Jesuits. [15] Alice Clifton (c. 1772-unknown), as an enslaved teenager, she was a defendant in an infanticide trial in 1787. So in June 1838, he negotiated a deal with Henry Johnson, a member of the House of Representatives, and Jesse Batey, a landowner in Louisiana, to sell Cornelius and the others. Please see also: Slaves Transported on the Katherine Jackson of Georgetown, Arriving New Orleans 6 Dec 1838, Source: "List of slaves on each estate to be sold," Box 40, Folder 10, Maryland Province Archives[2], Categories: Ascension Parish, Louisiana, Slave Owners | Ascension Parish, Louisiana, Slaves | Iberville Parish, Louisiana, Slave Owners | Iberville Parish, Louisiana, Slaves | Georgetown University, Washington, District of Columbia | Georgetown University Slaves | District of Columbia, Slave Owners | District of Columbia, Slaves | Maryland, Slaves | Maryland, Slave Owners, WIKITREE HOME | ABOUT | G2G FORUM | HELP | SEARCH. Many of them baptized Catholic, they were bought by planters to work. Alfred Francis Russell (1817-1884), 10th President of Liberia. Census of slaves to be sold in 1838 This is the original list of slaves from the Jesuit plantations compiled in preparation for the sale in 1838. Georgetown Reflects on Slavery, Memory, and Reconciliation Georgetown is engaged in a long-term and ongoing process to more deeply understand and respond to the university's role in the injustice of slavery and the legacies of enslavement and segregation in our nation. Father Mulledy promised his superiors that the slaves would continue to practice their religion. He has contacted a few, including Patricia Bayonne-Johnson, president of the Eastern Washington Genealogical Society in Spokane, who is helping to track the Jesuit slaves with her group. The notation betrayed no hint of the turmoil on board. Mr. Cellini, whose genealogists have already traced more than 200 of the slaves from Maryland to Louisiana, believes there may be thousands of living descendants. To pay that debt, the university sold 272 slaves the very people that helped build the school itself. [29] The slaves Mulledy gathered were sent on the three-week voyage aboard the Katherine Jackson,[27] which departed Alexandria on November 13 and arrived in New Orleans on December 6. The first payment on the remaining $90,000 would become due after five years. Ms. Crump, a retired television news anchor, was driving to Maringouin, her hometown, in early February when her cellphone rang. We have committed to finding ways that members of the Georgetown and Descendant communities can be engaged together in efforts that advance racial justice and enable every member of our Georgetown community to confront and engage with Georgetowns history with slavery.. (The two men would swap positions by 1838.). [66] In 2020, the college removed Mulledy's name. All of this was new to Ms. Crump, except for the name Cornelius or Neely, as Cornelius was known. Slavery was much more than the theft of labor; it was the deprivation of liberty for which this country professes so loudly. In fact, Harvard, Columbia, Brown, University of Virginia did as well. Some of that money helped to pay off the debts of the struggling college. [63][38], The College of the Holy Cross in Massachusetts, of which Mulledy was the first president from 1843 to 1848, also began to reconsider the name of one of its buildings in 2015. 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. Of the sum, $8,000 was used to satisfy a financial obligation that,[23] following a long-running and contentious dispute, Pope Pius VII had previously determined the Maryland Jesuits owed to Archbishop Ambrose Marchal of Baltimore and his successors. 2023 A Month of Tribute to 31 Women We Should All Know, Rosewood A Typical Race Riot in America. [36], Soon after the sale, Roothaan decided that Mulledy should be removed as provincial superior. Banks would finance land purchases using slaves as collateral. Now that we have this data, my hope is that we can use it to open doors and make connections. In November, the university agreed to remove the names of the Rev. Richard Cellini, the chief executive of a technology company and a Georgetown alumnus, hired eight genealogists to track down the slaves and their descendants. Georgetown has renamed one of its buildings Isaac Hawkins Hall named after the first enslaved on the list of the account of the sale. But he said he could not stop thinking about the slaves, whose names had been in Georgetowns archives for decades. [7], By 1824, the Jesuit plantations totaled more than 12,000 acres (4,900 hectares) in the State of Maryland, and 1,700 acres (690 hectares) in eastern Pennsylvania. . It lists the slaves by name according to plantation where they lived, identifies family groups, and records which ship (1, 2, or 3) they were shipped in. Some slaves suffered at the hands of a cruel overseer. [29] Some of the initial 272 slaves who were not delivered to Johnson were replaced with substitutes. From Equity Talk to Equity Walk: A Guide for Campus-Based Leadership and Practice is a vital wealth of information for college and university presidents and provosts, academic and student affairs professionals, faculty, and practitioners who seek to dismantle institutional barriers that stand in the way of achieving equity, specifically racial equity to achieve equitable outcomes in higher education. [30] In total, only 206 are known to have been transported to Louisiana. When you register, youll get unlimited access to our website and a free subscription to our email newsletter for daily updates with a smart, Catholic take on faith and culture from. She found out about the Jesuits and Georgetown and the sea voyage to Louisiana. 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. . Twenty-seven years earlier, a document dated June 19, 1838, showed that Maryland Jesuit priests sold 272 slaves to the owners of Louisiana plantations. Cardinal McElroy responds to his critics on sexual sin, the Eucharist, and LGBT and divorced/remarried Catholics, Worried you retired too early? Georgetown University was an active participant in the slave trade selling upwards of 272 slaves from their Maryland run plantation to the deep south in an effort to support the then struggling university in 1838 according to The New York Times. In recognizing the role Georgetown in the use of slaves as money, they are recognizing some of the depths of what slavery actually represented. More than half were younger than 20, and nearly a third were not yet 10 years old. 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 $2.96 million in 2021). Georgetown and the College of the Holy Cross renamed buildings, and the Jesuit Conference of Canada and the United States pledged to raise $100 million for the descendants of slaves owned by the Jesuits. Ashby's account book at Newtown.For a spreadsheet with all the data transcribed, seeGSA5. They change every day, so check often. But the decision to sell virtually all of their enslaved African-Americans in the 1830s left some priests deeply troubled. A photo of the slave cabins at Laurel Valley in Thibodaux is part of the GU272 Memory Project. 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. We encourage you to share the site on social media. Login to post. She later joined the Oblate Sisters of Providence, recognized as the oldest active Roman Catholic sisterhood in the Americas established by women of African descent. In 1836, the Jesuit Superior General, Jan Roothaan, authorized the provincial superior to carry out the sale on three conditions: the slaves must be permitted to practice their Catholic faith, their families must not be separated, and the proceeds of the sale must be used only to support Jesuits in training. They were heading to the only Catholic cemetery in Maringouin. Share. [71] The university instead decided to raise $400,000 per year in voluntary donations for the benefit of descendants. Last edited on 25 February 2023, at 03:24, Jesuit Conference of Canada and the United States, abolition of slavery in the United States, Slavery at American colleges and universities, "Where were the Jesuit plantations in Maryland? [18] The province was sharply divided, with the American-born Jesuits supporting a sale and the missionary European Jesuits opposing on the basis that it was immoral both to sell their patrimonial lands and to materially and morally harm the slaves by selling them into the Deep South, where they did not want to go. Colleges and universities have placed greater emphasis on education equity in recent years. It is also emblematic of the complex entanglement of American higher education and religious institutions with slavery. Corneliuss extended family was split, with his aunt Nelly and her daughters shipped to one plantation, and his uncle James and his wife and children sent to another, records show. The presidents of Harvard University and Georgetown University discuss their institutions historic ties to slavery in a conversation with Ta-Nehisi Coates. Please visit ourmembership pageto learn how you can invest in our work by subscribing to the magazine or making a donation. [1] The Jesuits received land patents from Lord Baltimore in 1636, were gifted land in the some Catholic Marylanders' wills, and purchased some land on their own, eventually becoming substantial landowners in the colony. Georgetown University Archives The Jesuits had sold off individual slaves before. [9] The main crops grown were tobacco and corn. As part of an ongoing consideration to this atrocity Georgetown is seeking to rectify their prior actions and, in a speech delivered to descendants of the identified descendants delivered this message: Today the Society of Jesus, who helped to establish Georgetown University and whose leaders enslaved and mercilessly sold your ancestors, stands before you to say that we have greatly sinned, said Rev. But priests at the Jesuit plantations recounted the panic and fear they witnessed when the slaves departed. This sale was the culmination of a contentious and long-running debate among the Maryland Jesuits over whether to keep, sell, or free their slaves, and whether to focus on their rural estates or on their growing urban missions, including their schools. His children and grandchildren also embraced the Catholic church. The college relied on Jesuit plantations in Maryland to help finance its operations, university officials say. Limit 20 per day. Are You A Liturgist With A Passion to Form Young Adults? [7] As early as 1814, the trustees of the Corporation of Roman Catholic Clergymen discussed manumitting all their slaves and abolishing slavery on the Jesuit plantations,[10] though in 1820, they decided against universal manumission. Timothy Kesicki, S.J., president of the Jesuit Conference of Canada and the United States, during a morning Liturgy of Remembrance, Contrition, and Hope. It also notes slaves who had run away, and those who had been "married off." 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. [24] When he returned in November to gather the rest of the slaves, the plantation managers had their slaves flee and hide. A white man, he admitted that he had never spent much time thinking about slavery or African-American history. Slaves and the products they produced were responsible for well over 50% of the entire GNP of the United States. A microcosm of the whole history of American slavery, Dr. Rothman said. The hope was to eventually identify the slaves descendants. Dr. Rothman, the Georgetown historian, heard about Mr. Cellinis efforts and let him know that he and several of his students were also tracing the slaves. Acknowledging the changing realities and increasing demands placed on contemporary postsecondary education, this book meets educators where they are and offers an effective design framework for what it means to move beyond equity being a buzzword in higher education. The internal slave trade in the United States, also known as the domestic slave trade, the Second Middle Passage and the interregional slave trade, was the term for the domestic trade of enslaved people within the United States that reallocated slaves across states during the Antebellum period.It was most significant after 1808, when the importation of slaves was prohibited. She does not put much stock in what she describes as casual institutional apologies. But she would like to see a scholarship program that would bring the slaves descendants to Georgetown as students. Use our links to Amazon anytime you shop Amazon. this helps us promote a safe and accountable online community, and allows us to update you when other commenters reply to your posts. We ask our visitors to confirm their email to keep your account secure and make sure you're able to receive email from us. Roughly two-thirds of the Jesuits former slaves including Cornelius and his family had been shipped to two plantations so distant from churches that they never see a Catholic priest, the Rev. And the 1838 sale worth about $3.3 million in todays dollars was organized by two of Georgetowns early presidents, both Jesuit priests. Georgetown is not the first or only university to own slaves. While they continued to support gradual emancipation, they believed that this option was becoming increasingly untenable, as the Maryland public's concern grew about the expanding number of free blacks. Your email address will not be published. [34] In the years after the sale, it also became clear that most of the slaves were not permitted to carry on their Catholic faith because they were living on plantations far removed from any Catholic church or priest. [5] The first record of slaves working Jesuit plantations in Maryland dates to 1711, but it is likely that there were slave laborers on the plantations a generation before then. Ms. Crump, 69, has been asking herself that question, too. [50], The 1838 slave sale returned to the public's awareness in the mid-2010s. 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). By the end of December, one of Mr. Cellinis genealogists felt confident that she had found a strong test case: the family of the boy, Cornelius Hawkins. After the Jesuits vacated the buildings, Ryan and Mulledy Halls lay vacant, while Gervase Hall was put to other use. (Valuable Plantation and Negroes for Sale, read one newspaper advertisement in 1852.). She feels great sadness as she envisions Cornelius as a young boy, torn from everything he knew. Participants in this discussion are: Drew Gilpin Faust, President, Harvard University. Georgetown University Sold Hundreds of SlavesDoes That Still Matter? [17], Mulledy and McSherry became increasingly vocal in their opposition to Jesuit slave ownership. 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. The Jesuit leaders running the institution that would later become Georgetown University sold the 272 enslaved men, women and children in 1838 to settle mounting debts threatening the. By the 1840s, word was trickling back to Washington that the slaves new owners had broken their promises. [3], Much of this land was put to use as plantations, the revenue from which financed the Jesuits' ministries. As part of Georgetown University's Slavery, Memory, and Reconciliation initiative, students in Professor Adam Rothman's fall 2019 UNXD 272 class researched buildings and sites on Georgetown's campus to provide historical context for understanding their significance. They found the last physical marker of Corneliuss journey at the Immaculate Heart of Mary cemetery, where Ms. Crumps father, grandmother and great-grandfather are also buried. [5] McSherry delayed selling the slaves because their market value had greatly diminished as a result of the Panic of 1837,[24] and because he was searching for a buyer who would agree to these conditions. Thomas Hibbert (1710-1780), English merchant, he became rich from slave labor on his Jamaican plantations. The grave of Cornelius Hawkins, one of 272 slaves sold by the Jesuits in 1838 to help keep what is now Georgetown University afloat. What remains is what is owed to the descendants. There is joy in that, she said, exhilaration even. Most of the 314 enslaved people were sent to Louisiana, but about a third remained in Maryland or were sold to other locations, according to an article on the website.
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