His children and grandchildren also embraced the Catholic church. A microcosm of the whole history of American slavery, Dr. Rothman said. 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.. [26] Johnson and Batey were to be held jointly and severally liable and each additionally identified a responsible party as a guarantor. Georgetown is not the only institution that has prospered on the backs of enslaved people. After the Jesuits vacated the buildings, Ryan and Mulledy Halls lay vacant, while Gervase Hall was put to other use. Your source for jobs, books, retreats, and much more. [4] Many of these slaves were gifted to the Jesuits, while others were purchased. 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 name had been passed down from generation to generation in her family. Three Jesuits traveled aboard The Ark and The Dove on Lord Baltimore's voyage to settle Maryland in 1634. [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. (RNS) A genealogical association has launched a new website detailing the family histories of slaves who were sold to keep Catholic-run Georgetown University from bankruptcy in . 272 Slaves Were Sold to Save Georgetown. Thomas F. Mulledy, president of Georgetown from 1829 to 1838, and again from 1845 to 1848, arranged the sale. With time, Georgetown professors, students and alumni are taking a look at this portion and tracking the people sold to finance the institution. [29], Not all of the 272 slaves intended to be sold to Louisiana met that fate. By the 1830s, however, their physical and religious conditions had improved considerably. 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. 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. A notation on the second page indicates that it was discovered by Fr. Check out some of the. Georgetown is not the first or only university to own slaves. But the popes order, which did not explicitly address slave ownership or private sales like the one organized by the Jesuits, offered scant comfort to Cornelius and the other slaves. The enslaved were grandmothers and grandfathers, carpenters and blacksmiths, pregnant women and anxious fathers, children and infants, who were fearful, bewildered and despairing as they saw their families and communities ripped apart by the sale of 1838. But the decision to sell virtually all of their enslaved African-Americans in the 1830s left some priests deeply troubled. And the 1838 sale worth about $3.3 million in todays dollars was organized by two of Georgetowns early presidents, both Jesuit priests. It is also emblematic of the complex entanglement of American higher education and religious institutions with slavery. She listened, stunned, as he told her about her great-great-grandfather, Cornelius Hawkins, who had labored on a plantation just a few miles from where she grew up. [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. [37], Before Roothaan's order reached Mulledy, Mulledy had already accepted the advice of McSherry and Eccleston in June 1839 to resign and go to Rome to defend himself before Roothaan. During this time, the Jesuits funded some of the most prestigious institutions of higher education in America in part through profits earned on their plantations. A Reflection for Friday of the First Week of Lent, by Jill Rice. 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. Join Amazon Prime Watch Thousands of Movies & TV Shows Anytime . [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. [58] In November of that year, following a student-led protest and sit-in,[59] the working group recommended that the university temporarily rename Mulledy Hall (which opened during Mulledy's presidency in 1833)[60] to Freedom Hall, and McSherry Hall (which opened in 1792 and housed a meditation center)[61] to Remembrance Hall. Login to post. 2023 A Month of Tribute to 31 Women We Should All Know, Rosewood A Typical Race Riot in America. That man, Thomas Mulledy, then the president of Georgetown University, had sold 272 slaves to pay off a massive debt strangling the university. 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. They were heading to the only Catholic cemetery in Maringouin. Today, the universitys leaders, students and alumni are grappling with how to confront that history. The condition of slaves on the plantations varied over time, as did the condition of the Jesuits living with them. 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. American Ancestors announced the new GU272 Memory Project website on Wednesday (June 19), the anniversary of Juneteenth, the day in 1865 when some American slaves learned they had been freed. Twenty-seven years earlier, a document dated June 19, 1838, showed that Maryland Jesuit priests sold 272 slaves to the owners of Louisiana plantations. 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. The next year, Pope Gregory XVI explicitly barred Catholics from engaging in this traffic in Blacks no matter what pretext or excuse.. [17], Mulledy and McSherry became increasingly vocal in their opposition to Jesuit slave ownership. Melvin Robert and Joya Mia Italiano look into Georgetown Universitys response on the Lip News. Georgetown University announced on Tuesday it will create a fund that could generate close to $400,000 a year to benefit the descendants of slaves once sold by the university, the latest in the . The sale of 272 slaves in 1838 rescued the College from crushing debt. We have been here since the founding of this country, and we are a significant part of the American experience.. [24] He located two Louisiana planters who were willing to purchase the slaves: Henry Johnson, a former United States Senator and governor of Louisiana, and Jesse Batey. 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 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. Central concepts and key points are illustrated through campus examples. . 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. We also posted a 5 part mini-series on the 100th anniversary of one of the most horrific massacres in the history of America. Peter Havermans wrote of an elderly woman who fell to her knees, begging to know what she had done to deserve such a fate, according to Robert Emmett Curran, a retired Georgetown historian who described eyewitness accounts of the sale in his research. 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.. And the money raised by the sale would not be used to pay off debt or for operating expenses. Inspiring Stories of Black History and Achievement, 272 Slaves Sold to Finance Georgetown University. [70], In 2019, undergraduate students at Georgetown voted in a non-binding referendum to impose a symbolic reparations fee of $27.20 per student. 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. We encourage you to visit our website, call us at (202)-687-8330, or email us at descendants@georgetown.edu if you are interested in learning more or sharing your ideas and reflections. 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. 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). The church records helped lead to a 69-year-old woman in Baton Rouge named Maxine Crump. [43][44] In 1856, Washington Barrow sold the slaves he purchased from Batey to William Patrick and Joseph B. Woolfolk of Iberville Parish. (Valuable Plantation and Negroes for Sale, read one newspaper advertisement in 1852.). As a result, he had to sell his property in the 1840s and renegotiate the terms of his payment. The plantation would be sold again and again and again, records show, but Corneliuss family remained intact. It is interesting that the date was June 19th as many years later, it was on what is now recognized as Juneteenth. [137] Thomas C. Hindman (1828-1868), American politician and Confederate general. 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. Now, for the first time, Ms. Crump understood its origins. (Slaves were often donated by prosperous parishioners.) As a Georgetown employee, Jeremy Alexander watched as the university grappled with its haunted past: the sale of slaves in 1838 to help rescue it from financial ruin. These posts focus on the reality of Black life in America after the Civil War culminating in the landmark Brown v Board of Education that changed so many of the earlier practices. Documents provide the factual framework, but people supply the human story.. 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 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 . Other Jesuits voiced their anger to the Archbishop of Baltimore, Samuel Eccleston, who conveyed this to Roothaan. In all, the Jesuits sold 314 men, women and children over . The sale of these 272 slaves, known as the GU272, saved the university from foreclosure. Ta-Nehisi Coates, National Correspondent, The Atlantic Recorded Thursday, September 29, 2016, at the Washington Ideas Forum. Soon, the two men and their teams were working on parallel tracks. A photograph of Frank Campbell, one of 272 slaves sold to keep Georgetown University afloat, was found in a scrapbook at Nicholls State University in Louisiana. Although the working group was established in August, it was student demonstrations at Georgetown in the fall that helped to galvanize alumni and gave new urgency to the administrations efforts. 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? Georgetown has renamed one of its buildings Isaac Hawkins Hall named after the first enslaved on the list of the account of the sale. Their panic and desperation would be mostly forgotten for more than a century. Leaders in policy, business, technology, science, history, arts and culture engaged with top journalists on the most consequential issues of our time. We see that slavery was MUCH more than depriving people of their liberty and theft of their services, it was the cruel and long lasting emotional devastation of selling away loved ones, taking indecent liberties, cruel and inhumane treatment and so much more. It would not survive, Father Mulledy feared, without an influx of cash. Slavery was much more than the theft of labor; it was the deprivation of liberty for which this country professes so loudly. [47], While the 1838 slave sale gave rise to scandal at the time, the event eventually faded out of the public awareness. ", New England Historic Genealogical Society, "They thought Georgetown University's missing slaves were 'lost.' But he said he could not stop thinking about the slaves, whose names had been in Georgetowns archives for decades. The grave of Cornelius Hawkins, one of 272 slaves sold by the Jesuits in 1838 to help keep what is now Georgetown University afloat.CreditWilliam Widmer for The New York Times. The researchers have used archival records to follow their footsteps, from the Jesuit plantations in Maryland, to the docks of New Orleans, to three plantations west and south of Baton Rouge, La. Slaves and the products they produced were responsible for well over 50% of the entire GNP of the United States. There is joy in that, she said, exhilaration even. 51 slaves were to be sent to Alexandria, Virginia, then shipped to Louisiana. 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. Behind her are sugar plantations and the sugar mill where her ancestors worked. It will challenge and change your understanding of what we were as Americans and of what we are. Chicago Tribune In this groundbreaking historical expos, Douglas A. Blackmon brings to light one of the most shameful chapters in American history an Age of Neo slavery that thrived from the aftermath of the Civil War through the dawn of World War II. The New York Times would like to hear from people who have done research into their genealogical history. [32] An unknown number of slaves may also have run away and escaped transportation. [35] He ordered McSherry to inform Mulledy that he had been removed as provincial superior, and that if Mulledy refused to step down, he would be dismissed from the Society of Jesus. [8] In reality, by the early 19th century, the Jesuit plantations were in such a state of mismanagement that the Jesuit Superior General in Rome, Tadeusz Brzozowski, sent Irish Jesuit Peter Kenney to review the operations of the Maryland Mission as a canonical visitor in 1820. It has been stated that value of slaves in America was more valuable than all the industrial and transportation capital of the United States in the first half of the 19th century. Use our links to Amazon anytime you shop Amazon. They worried that new owners might not allow the slaves to practice their Catholic faith. Georgetown owned these human beings and they had been used to build the institutions physical buildings, tend farms and perform hard labor under rigid control. 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. An alumnus, following the protest from afar, wondered if more needed to be done. [46] Due to financial difficulties, Johnson sold half his property, including some of the slaves he had purchased in 1838, to Philip Barton Key in 1844. The records describe runaways, harsh plantation conditions and the anguish voiced by some Jesuits over their participation in a system of forced servitude. You can also manage your account details and your print subscription after logging in. We can't do it without youAmerica Media relies on generous support from our readers. 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. [70], The Corporation of Roman Catholic Clergymen was created in 1792 to preserve the property of the. They also knew that life on plantations in the Deep South was notoriously brutal, and feared that families might end up being separated and resold. Thomas R. Murphy, a historian at Seattle University who has written a book about the Jesuits and slavery. Ms. Crump, a retired television news anchor, was driving to Maringouin, her hometown, in early February when her cellphone rang. There is no indication that he received any response. (The two men would swap positions by 1838.). 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. We receive a small royalty without cost to you. The Jesuits had sold off individual slaves before. Georgetown was a prominent Jesuit priests. And she learned that Cornelius had worked the soil of a 2,800-acre estate that straddled the Bayou Maringouin. [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. We pray with you today because we have greatly sinned and because we are profoundly sorry.. We encourage you to share the site on social media. He demanded that Mulledy travel to Rome to answer the charges of disobeying orders and promoting scandal. The sale prompted immediate outcry from fellow Jesuits. Georgetown University Sold Hundreds of SlavesDoes That Still Matter? Share. (Ms. Bayonne-Johnson discovered her connection through an earlier effort by the university to publish records online about the Jesuit plantations.). Youll never know where you came from, said Mlisande Short-Colomb, a descendant of the group of slaves, in a statement about the project. [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. In letters written to Jesuit superiors in Maryland, one priest who accidentally crossed paths with the slaves in Louisiana after the sale bemoaned the fact that the slaves couldnt practice Catholicism.. Some tips for making the most of your twilight years. [27] Johnson allowed these slaves to remain in Maryland because he intended to return and try to buy their spouses as well. In recognizing the role Georgetown in the use of slaves as money, they are recognizing some of the depths of what slavery actually represented. Kenney found the slaves facing arbitrary discipline, a meager diet, pastoral neglect, and engaging in vice. In April 2017, Georgetown renamed buildings that had honored university leaders responsible for selling those enslaved Africans to Louisiana plantations. 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. [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. 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. In all, the Jesuits sold 314 men, women and children over a 5-year period stretching from 1838 to 1843. Examined and found correct, he wrote of Cornelius and the 129 other people he found on the ship. Many have been located; however, it is difficult to determine exactly how many were exploited by the University in this financial transaction. Within two weeks, Mr. Cellini had set up a nonprofit, the Georgetown Memory Project, hired eight genealogists and raised more than $10,000 from fellow alumni to finance their research. On that same day, the university rededicated two buildings previously named for former university presidents who were priests and supporters of the slave trade. In the 16th, 17th and 18th centuries, the Society of Jesus (Jesuits) and the Catholic Church were among the largest slaveholding institutions in America. It is better to prevent than to attempt to remedy. 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. She still wants to know more about Corneliuss beginnings, and about his life as a free man. The first payment on the remaining $90,000 would become due after five years. (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. 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. [7] In 1830, the new Superior General, Jan Roothaan, returned Kenney to the United States, specifically to address the question of whether the Jesuits should divest themselves of their rural plantations altogether, which by this time had almost completely paid down their debt. Cornelius had originally been shipped to a plantation so far from a church that he had married in a civil ceremony. Families would not be separated. 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. Required fields are marked *. Since youre a frequent reader of our website, we want to be able to share even more great, As a frequent reader of our website, you know how important, Georgetown students voted to pay for reparations. [22], In October 1836, Roothaan officially authorized the Maryland Jesuits to sell their slaves, so long as three conditions were satisfied: the slaves were to be permitted to practice their Catholic faith, their families were not to be separated, and the proceeds of the sale had to be used to support Jesuits in training,[23] rather than to pay down debts. In the case of Amazon, please use our links whenever you shop. Following Batey's death, his West Oak plantation and the slaves living there were sold in January 1853 to Tennessee politician Washington Barrow and Barrow's son, John S. Barrow, a resident of Baton Rouge, Louisiana. [37] Roothaan was particularly concerned because it had become clear that, contrary to his order, families had been separated by the slaves' new owners. Jesse Batey died in 1851 and the White Oak Plantation was sold. [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. list of slaves sold by georgetown university. The sale however is the largest one acknowledged to date. The Jesuits ultimately received payment many years late and never received the full $115,000. [50], In 1981, historian Robert Emmett Curran presented at academic conferences a comprehensive research into the Maryland Jesuits' participation in slavery, and published this research in 1983. (RNS) A genealogical association has launched a new website detailing the family histories of slaves who were sold to keep Catholic-run Georgetown University from bankruptcy in the 1800s. ). African-Americans are often a fleeting presence in the documents of the 1800s. Its hard to know what could possibly reconcile a history like this, he said. [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. Thomas F. Mulledy and the Rev. He listened . Limit 20 per day. [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 is necessary to keep in mind that these people were free in their native country and enslaved once they got to America. Georgetown University (Daniel Slim/Agence France-Presse/Getty Images) Article A genealogical organization launched a free website Wednesday to help those who want to learn more about the. 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. [29] Some of the initial 272 slaves who were not delivered to Johnson were replaced with substitutes. Georgetown and the Society of Jesus Maryland Province have issued an apology for their role in this action to more than 100 descendants who had been traced at the time of the apology. Our membership program offers special benefits to college students including: * Unlimited FREE Two-Day Shipping (with no minimum order size), * Exclusive deals and promotions for college students, Georgetown University confronts its history with slavery. For the eighth year, the Forum was hosted by The Atlantic in partnership with the Aspen Institute. Mr. Cellini is an unlikely racial crusader. 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. To comment or make suggestions on future posts, use Contact Us. 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. Many of them baptized Catholic, they were bought by planters to work. You dont have to purchase the item in the link but using the link helps both of us and we thank you for your support. Thomas Hibbert (1710-1780), English merchant, he became rich from slave labor on his Jamaican plantations.