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. As Black Americans as descendants of enslaved people we have always been told youll never know who you are. The presidents of Harvard University and Georgetown University discuss their institutions historic ties to slavery in a conversation with Ta-Nehisi Coates. She feels great sadness as she envisions Cornelius as a young boy, torn from everything he knew. The Rev. 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. Jesuit Father Hans Zollner will be a consultant for the Diocese of Romes office dedicated to safeguarding minors and vulnerable people. Johnson and Batey agreed to pay $115,000,[5] equivalent to $2.96million in 2021,[25] over the course of ten years plus six percent annual interest. (Slaves were often donated by prosperous parishioners.) Much more than a way to chat. It also notes slaves who had run away, and those who had been "married off." Dubuisson described how the public reputation of the Jesuits in Washington and Virginia declined as a result of the sale. [71] The university instead decided to raise $400,000 per year in voluntary donations for the benefit of descendants. So Judy Riffel, one of the genealogists hired by Mr. Cellini, began following a chain of weddings and births, baptisms and burials. The sale of these 272 slaves, known as the GU272, saved the university from foreclosure. 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. Unknown because that portion of history is so like anything that reflects on the horrors of slavery preempted from our history. [28] Most of the slaves who fled returned to their plantations, and Mulledy made a third visit later that month, where he gathered some of the remaining slaves for transport. 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. [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. Colleges and universities have placed greater emphasis on education equity in recent years. 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. This has made people reluctant to see the past and this has had a long term harm by remaining hidden and allowed to fester. 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. Against the conditions agreed upon, families were separated due to this sale. [64] Mulledy Hall, a student dormitory that opened in 1966,[65] was renamed as BrooksMulledy Hall in 2016, adding the name of a later president, John E. Brooks, who worked to racially integrate the college. We have been here since the founding of this country, and we are a significant part of the American experience.. Its hard to know what could possibly reconcile a history like this, he said. Tweet. 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. The website is part of a collaboration between Boston-based American Ancestors, also called the New England Historic Genealogical Society, and the Georgetown Memory Project, which was founded by Georgetown alumnus Richard Cellini. 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. If you login and register your print subscription number with your account, youll have unlimited access to the website. It soon became clear that Roothaan's conditions had not been fully met. [37] As censure for the scandal,[39] Roothaan ordered Mulledy to remain in Europe,[35] and Mulledy lived in exile in Nice until 1843. Joseph Zwinge (identified as "J.Z.") The university itself owes its existence to this history, said Adam Rothman, a historian at Georgetown and a member of a university working group that is studying ways for the institution to acknowledge and try to make amends for its tangled roots in slavery. A Reflection for Friday of the First Week of Lent, by Jill Rice. 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. 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. 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. 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. This resulted in families being split for economic reasons with no consideration of human relationships. Ta-Nehisi Coates, National Correspondent, The Atlantic Recorded Thursday, September 29, 2016, at the Washington Ideas Forum. He addressed his concerns to Father Mulledy, who three years earlier had returned to his post as president of Georgetown. 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. What Does It Owe Their Descendants? It is also emblematic of the complex entanglement of American higher education and religious institutions with slavery. In the list are links to affiliate partners. [27], The articles of agreement listed each of the slaves being sold by name. In addition to the summary above, it is our intent to provide you with a more detailed look at the matter by providing videos and books that allow a deeper view. (The two men would swap positions by 1838.). [12], One of the Maryland Jesuits' institutions, Georgetown College (later known as Georgetown University), also rented slaves. [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. Examined and found correct, he wrote of Cornelius and the 129 other people he found on the ship. 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. One building is now named in honor of a slave who was 65 years old when he was sold in 1838. Other Jesuits voiced their anger to the Archbishop of Baltimore, Samuel Eccleston, who conveyed this to Roothaan. Mr. Cellini is an unlikely racial crusader. [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. There was no need for a map. In April 2017, Georgetown renamed buildings that had honored university leaders responsible for selling those enslaved Africans to Louisiana plantations. 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. 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. [45] Patrick and Woolfolk's slaves were then sold in July 1859 to Emily Sparks, the widow of Austin Woolfolk. Slavery was much more than the theft of labor; it was the deprivation of liberty for which this country professes so loudly. Eventually, Roothaan removed Thomas Mulledy as provincial superior for disobeying orders and promoting scandal, exiling him to Nice for several years. [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. The enslaved African-Americans had belonged to the nations most prominent Jesuit priests. [27] The agreement provided that 51 slaves would be sent to the port of Alexandria, Virginia in order to be shipped to Louisiana. And they are confronting a particularly wrenching question: What, if anything, is owed to the descendants of slaves who were sold to help ensure the colleges survival? 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. [34] During the controversy, Mulledy fell into alcoholism. A Jesuit reports on the slaves' religious life in Louisiana, 1848, Chatham Plantation, Ascension Parish, Louisiana. A white man, he admitted that he had never spent much time thinking about slavery or African-American history. ", What We Know: Report to the President of The College of The Holy Cross 2016, "Historical Timeline: Events Affecting the GU272 from the 1838 Sale to the Present", "Bill of Sale from the Heirs of Jesse Batey to Washington Barrow, January 18, 1853", "Bill of Sale for Land and People from Washington Barrow to William Patrick and Joseph B. Woolfolk, February 4, 1856", "Bill of Sale for Land and 138 People from William Patrick and Joseph Woolfolk to Emily Sparks, Widow of Austin Woolfolk, July 16, 1859", "Henry Johnson's Sales of Enslaved Persons, 18441851", Report of the Working Group on Slavery, Memory, and Reconciliation 2016, "University Requests Change in Use for Ryan Hall and Mulledy Hall", "Renovation of Former Jesuit Residence Beginning May 19", "Slavery's Remnants, Buried and Overlooked", "Georgetown University to rename two buildings that reflect school's ties to slavery", "Announcing the Working Group on Slavery, Memory & Reconciliation", "Concrete Expressions of Georgetown's Jesuit Heritage: A Photographic Sampler of Campus Buildings and the Jesuits for Whom They are Named From the University Archives", "Heeding Demands, University Renames Buildings", "Mulledy Name To Be Removed From BrooksMulledy Hall", "President's Response to Report of the Mulledy/Healy Legacy Committee", "Georgetown Apologizes, Renames Halls After Slaves", "Georgetown Apologizes for 1838 Sale of More Than 270 Enslaved, Dedicates Buildings", "Georgetown University Plans Steps to Atone for Slave Past", "For Georgetown, Jesuits and Slavery Descendants, Bid for Racial Healing Sours Over Reparations", "Georgetown Students Agree to Create Reparations Fund", "Catholic Order Pledges $100 Million to Atone for Slave Labor and Sales", "Saving Souls and Selling Them: Jesuit Slaveholding and the Georgetown Slavery Archive", "Foundation and First Administration of the Maryland Province, Part I: Background", "Catholic Slaveowners and the Development of Georgetown University's Slave Hiring System, 17921862", Report of the Working Group on Slavery, Memory, and Reconciliation to the President of Georgetown University, The Lost Jesuit Slaves of Maryland: Searching for 91 people left behind in 1838, What We Know: Report to the President of The College of The Holy Cross, Slavery, History, Memory, and Reconciliation Project, Video of Isaac Hawkins Hall dedication ceremony from C-SPAN, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=1838_Jesuit_slave_sale&oldid=1141447737, This page was last edited on 25 February 2023, at 03:24. [48] It is one of the most well-documented slave sales of its era. The worn gravestone had toppled, but the wording was plain: Neely Hawkins Died April 16, 1902.. Thomas Lilly reported. History must be faced in order to heal and move forward! The church records helped lead to a 69-year-old woman in Baton Rouge named Maxine Crump. [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. They were heading to the only Catholic cemetery in Maringouin. [51] Other historians covered the subject in literature published between the 1980s and 2000s. [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. IMPORTANT PRIVACY NOTICE & DISCLAIMER: YOU HAVE A RESPONSIBILITY TO USE CAUTION WHEN DISTRIBUTING PRIVATE INFORMATION. Please visit ourmembership pageto learn how you can invest in our work by subscribing to the magazine or making a donation. 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. The sale of 272 slaves in 1838 rescued the College from crushing debt. In addition to becoming physically dilapidated, all but one of the plantations had fallen into debt. At Georgetown, slavery and scholarship were inextricably linked. Join Amazon Prime Watch Thousands of Movies & TV Shows Anytime . Alfred Francis Russell (1817-1884), 10th President of Liberia. While it would seem as if there would be some mention of this in history, it remained largely unknown. [13], Beginning in 1800, there were instances of the Jesuit plantation managers freeing individual slaves or permitting slaves to purchase their freedom. 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. [137] Thomas C. Hindman (1828-1868), American politician and Confederate general. It was his Catholicism, born on the Jesuit plantations of his childhood, that would provide researchers with a road map to his descendants. From the 2016 Washington Ideas Forum. Thomas R. Murphy, a historian at Seattle University who has written a book about the Jesuits and slavery. Jesse Batey died in 1851 and the White Oak Plantation was sold. Your email address will not be published. [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. Participants in this discussion are: Drew Gilpin Faust, President, Harvard University. [11] On some plantations, the majority of slaves did not work because they were too young or old. But few were lucky enough to escape. These are real people with real names and real descendants.. It is necessary to keep in mind that these people were free in their native country and enslaved once they got to America. On Juneteenth, the debate comes to Congress. [17], Mulledy and McSherry became increasingly vocal in their opposition to Jesuit slave ownership. [56][62] In 2016, The New York Times published an article that brought the history of the Jesuits' and university's relationship with slavery to national attention. [69] Several groups of descendants have been created, which have lobbied Georgetown University and the Society of Jesus for reparations, and groups have disagreed with the form that their desired reparations should take. [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. This sale was overseen by Provincial Superior William McSherry and Friar Thomas Mulledy. She still wants to know more about Corneliuss beginnings, and about his life as a free man. Despite coverage of the Maryland Jesuits' slave ownership and the 1838 sale in academic literature, news of these facts came as a surprise to the public in 2015, prompting a study of Georgetown University's and Jesuits' historical relationship with slavery. Central concepts and key points are illustrated through campus examples. Share with your friends! [36], Soon after the sale, Roothaan decided that Mulledy should be removed as provincial superior. On that same day, the university rededicated two buildings previously named for former university presidents who were priests and supporters of the slave trade. One-hundred-seventy-eight years ago, Georgetown University was free to everyone who was able to attend; it was also massively in debt. Thomas F. Mulledy and the Rev. 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. In 1844, Henry Johnson sold a share of Chatham and would eventually sell the remainder of his land and enslaved people to John R. Thompson in 1851. She is outraged that the churchs leaders sanctioned the buying and selling of slaves, and that Georgetown profited from the sale of her ancestors. The slaves were also identified as collateral in the event that Johnson, Batey, and their guarantors defaulted on their payments. [65], On April 18, 2017, DeGioia, along with the provincial superior of the Maryland Province, and the president of the Jesuit Conference of Canada and the United States, held a liturgy in which they formally apologized on behalf of their respective institutions for their participation in slavery. [52] In 2014, renovation began on Ryan and Mulledy Halls to convert them into a student residence. Youll never know where you came from, said Mlisande Short-Colomb, a descendant of the group of slaves, in a statement about the project. This was only a portion of the slaves bought and sold by the Maryland Jesuits over time.[1]. Other industries made loads of money indirectly. [57], In September 2015, DeGioia convened a Working Group on Slavery, Memory, and Reconciliation to study the slave sale and recommend how to treat it in the present day. The week also provided opportunities for members of the descendant community to connect with one another and with Jesuits through a private vigil on Monday night, a descendant-only dinner on Tuesday evening and tours of the Maryland plantation where their ancestors were enslaved. [70], In 2019, undergraduate students at Georgetown voted in a non-binding referendum to impose a symbolic reparations fee of $27.20 per student. 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. [41] The Jesuits never received the total $115,000 that was owed under the agreement. Slaves worked on the Jesuit plantations in Maryland that helped to sustain the Jesuits' religious and educational mission. Books and Textbooks One of the greatest ways to advance your life choices and future. But he said he could not stop thinking about the slaves, whose names had been in Georgetowns archives for decades. Cardinal McElroy on radical inclusion for L.G.B.T. A Reflection for Saturday of the First Week of Lent, by Christopher Parker. [49] There was periodic and sometimes extensive coverage of both the sale and the Jesuits' slave ownership in various literature. As a result, he had to sell his property in the 1840s and renegotiate the terms of his payment. [29] Some of the initial 272 slaves who were not delivered to Johnson were replaced with substitutes.
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