Georgetown has renamed one of its buildings Isaac Hawkins Hall named after the first enslaved on the list of the account of the sale. Having descendant voices present alongside historical documents is an essential part of the GU272 narrative, said Claire Vail, the projects director for American Ancestors, in an announcement about the website. 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. But priests at the Jesuit plantations recounted the panic and fear they witnessed when the slaves departed. The first payment on the remaining $90,000 would become due after five years. One building was renamed for Isaac Hawkins, first on the list of the 272 human beings sold in 1838. Participants in this discussion are: Drew Gilpin Faust, President, Harvard University. Georgetown University Sold Hundreds of SlavesDoes That Still Matter? Michelle Miller reports. THEY NEED TO BE FOUND AND LINKED. 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. 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. As early as the 1780s, Dr. Rothman found, they openly discussed the need to cull their stock of human beings. [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. But he was persuaded to reconsider by several prominent Jesuits, including Father Mulledy, then the influential president of Georgetown who had overseen its expansion, and Father McSherry, who was in charge of the Jesuits Maryland mission. At Georgetown, slavery and scholarship were inextricably linked. There was no need for a map. You can either click on the link in your confirmation email or simply re-enter your email address below to confirm it. [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 Jesuits used the proceeds to benefit then-Georgetown College. That alumnus, Richard J. Cellini, the chief executive of a technology company and a practicing Catholic, was troubled that neither the Jesuits nor university officials had tried to trace the lives of the enslaved African-Americans or compensate their progeny. GU272 descendent Carolyn Smith gestures toward gravestones of descendants of enslaved people in Houma, La. Books and Textbooks One of the greatest ways to advance your life choices and future. 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. The article details how the sold slaves were transported to three Louisiana plantations, where they faced brutal treatment. A Jesuit reports on the slaves' religious life in Louisiana, 1848, Chatham Plantation, Ascension Parish, Louisiana. [42], Before the abolition of slavery in the United States in 1865, many slaves sold by the Jesuits changed ownership several 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. Cornelius had originally been shipped to a plantation so far from a church that he had married in a civil ceremony. [32] An unknown number of slaves may also have run away and escaped transportation. They were looking to buy slaves in the Upper South more cheaply than they could in the Deep South, and agreed to Mulledy's asking price of approximately $400 per person. Colleges and universities have placed greater emphasis on education equity in recent years. It soon became clear that Roothaan's conditions had not been fully met. Cardinal McElroy on radical inclusion for L.G.B.T. Check out some of the. She still wants to know more about Corneliuss beginnings, and about his life as a free man. Ta-Nehisi Coates, National Correspondent, The Atlantic Recorded Thursday, September 29, 2016, at the Washington Ideas Forum. The condition of slaves on the plantations varied over time, as did the condition of the Jesuits living with them. A Reflection for Friday of the First Week of Lent, by Jill Rice. 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. March 24, 2017. 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 . To see the posts, click here. 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. And the 1838 sale worth about $3.3 million in todays dollars was organized by two of Georgetowns early presidents, both Jesuit priests. [38] While McSherry initially persuaded Roothaan to forgo removing Mulledy,[37] in August 1839, Roothaan resolved that Mulledy must be removed to quell the ongoing scandal. [34] During the controversy, Mulledy fell into alcoholism. All of this was new to Ms. Crump, except for the name Cornelius or Neely, as Cornelius was known. They worried that new owners might not allow the slaves to practice their Catholic faith. 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. One-hundred-seventy-eight years ago, Georgetown University was free to everyone who was able to attend; it was also massively in debt. Georgetown University Archives The Jesuits had sold off individual slaves before. [8] These consisted primarily of the plantations of White Marsh in Prince George's County, St. Inigoes and Newtown Manor in St. Mary's County, St. Thomas Manor in Charles County, and Bohemia Manor in Cecil County. John DeGioia, President, Georgetown University. Richard Cellini, the chief executive of a technology company and a Georgetown alumnus, hired eight genealogists to track down the slaves and their descendants. 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. We receive a small royalty without cost to you. The U.S. Department of State defines modern slavery as "the act of recruiting, harboring, transporting, providing, or obtaining a person for compelled . Share with your friends! Login to post. [18], The Maryland Jesuits, having been elevated from a mission to the status of a province in 1833,[17] held their first general congregation in 1835, where they considered again what to do with their plantations. African-Americans are often a fleeting presence in the documents of the 1800s. She feels great sadness as she envisions Cornelius as a young boy, torn from everything he knew. A white man, he admitted that he had never spent much time thinking about slavery or African-American history. The students organized a protest and a sit-in, using the hashtag #GU272 for the slaves who were sold. [15], While Roothaan decided in 1831, based on the advice of the Maryland Mission superior, Francis Dzierozynski, that the Jesuits should maintain and improve their plantations rather than sell them, Kenney and his advisors (Thomas Mulledy, William McSherry, and Stephen Dubuisson) wrote to Roothaan in 1832 about the growing public opposition to slavery in the United States, and strongly urged Roothaan to allow the Jesuits to gradually free their slaves. 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.. [35][34] Benedict Fenwick, the Bishop of Boston, privately lamented the fate of the slaves and considered the sale an extreme measure. Share. [24], Mulledy quickly made arrangements to carry out the sale. In exchange, they would receive 272 slaves from the four Jesuit plantations in southern Maryland,[5][24] constituting nearly all of the slaves owned by the Maryland Jesuits. Alfred "Teen" Blackburn (1842-1951), one of the last living survivors of slavery in the United States who had a clear recollection of it. Key then transferred this property to John R. Thompson. A notation on the second page indicates that it was discovered by Fr. [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. They could then make 40% on the labor of the slave and pay the bank 8%. Some slaves suffered at the hands of a cruel overseer. Now they are real to me, she said, more real every day.. The articles of agreement listed each of the slaves by name to be sold. The notation betrayed no hint of the turmoil on board. -- 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 . this helps us promote a safe and accountable online community, and allows us to update you when other commenters reply to your posts. Georgetown Slavery Archive Date 1838 Contributor Adam Rothman Relation GSA63 Format PDF Language English Type Text Identifier GSA5 Text Item Type Metadata Original Format Spreadsheet Files Collection Sale of Maryland Jesuit's enslaved community to Louisiana in 1838 Tags Families, Plantations, Slaves Citation 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. In 1838, the Jesuit priests who ran the countrys top Catholic university needed money to keep it alive. They recognize that despite their principals, they recognized the theft of labor, the destruction of families and the long term devastation that this inflicted on an entire race of people. The Rev. History must be faced in order to heal and move forward! ", New England Historic Genealogical Society, "They thought Georgetown University's missing slaves were 'lost.' Georgetown is not the first or only university to own slaves. Some children were sold without their parents, records show, and slaves were dragged off by force to the ship, the Rev. 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. [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. Limit 20 per day. Freedom Hall became Isaac Hawkins Hall, after the first slave listed on the articles of agreement for the 1838 sale. The next year, Pope Gregory XVI explicitly barred Catholics from engaging in this traffic in Blacks no matter what pretext or excuse.. Enslaved, marginalized and forced into illiteracy by laws that prohibited them from learning to read and write, many seem like ghosts who pass through this world without leaving a trace. As a frequent reader of our website, you know how important Americas voice is in the conversation about the church and the world. He was about 48 then, a father, a husband, a farm laborer and, finally, a free man. These are real people with real names and real descendants.. Moreover, men and women held in bondage were also part of the day-to-day operation of Georgetown College in its early decades. The church records helped lead to a 69-year-old woman in Baton Rouge named Maxine Crump. Other Jesuits voiced their anger to the Archbishop of Baltimore, Samuel Eccleston, who conveyed this to Roothaan. After the Jesuits vacated the buildings, Ryan and Mulledy Halls lay vacant, while Gervase Hall was put to other use. The Jesuits had sold off individual slaves before. Examined and found correct, he wrote of Cornelius and the 129 other people he found on the ship. [48] It is one of the most well-documented slave sales of its era. The site includes a searchable database with genealogies of descendants who have died. 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. But the decision to sell virtually all of their enslaved African-Americans in the 1830s left some priests deeply troubled. 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? [29], Not all of the 272 slaves intended to be sold to Louisiana met that fate. 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. Many of them baptized Catholic, they were bought by planters to work. It is better to prevent than to attempt to remedy. On Juneteenth, the debate comes to Congress. [49] There was periodic and sometimes extensive coverage of both the sale and the Jesuits' slave ownership in various literature. Jesse Batey died in 1851 and the White Oak Plantation was sold. [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. [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 1970s saw an increase in public scholarship on the Maryland Jesuits' slave ownership. [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. [5] In October of that year, Mulledy succeeded McSherry, who was dying, as provincial superior. They were looked on not as humans but as collateral and sold to secure the future of this great Catholic institution that hold such a place of honor to this day. 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. But he said he could not stop thinking about the slaves, whose names had been in Georgetowns archives for decades. Many institutions owned slaves and Georgetown University was no exception. She was the citys first black woman television anchor. [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. Now, with racial protests roiling college campuses, an unusual collection of Georgetown professors, students, alumni and genealogists is trying to find out what happened to those 272 men, women and children. Amazing! 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. We ask readers to log in so that we can recognize you as a registered user and give you unrestricted access to our website. [24] When he returned in November to gather the rest of the slaves, the plantation managers had their slaves flee and hide. In recognizing the role Georgetown in the use of slaves as money, they are recognizing some of the depths of what slavery actually represented. [137] Thomas C. Hindman (1828-1868), American politician and Confederate general. Several substitutions were made to the initial list of those to be sold, and 91 of those initially listed remained in Maryland. Slaves were collateral and could be used to mortgage land and other goods. 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. Against the conditions agreed upon, families were separated due to this sale. You can also manage your account details and your print subscription after logging in. It was his Catholicism, born on the Jesuit plantations of his childhood, that would provide researchers with a road map to his descendants. It is also emblematic of the complex entanglement of American higher education and religious institutions with slavery. The sale prompted immediate outcry from fellow Jesuits. With time, Georgetown professors, students and alumni are taking a look at this portion and tracking the people sold to finance the institution. Descendants are learning new links to their pasts as a result of the project. Please contact us at members@americamedia.org with any questions. It is interesting that the date was June 19th as many years later, it was on what is now recognized as Juneteenth. (Best for messages specifically directed to those editing this profile. 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. A fantastic research tool with video camera, navigation programs and so much more. Joseph Carberry, 1824 GSA29: Priscilla Queen petitions for her freedom, 1810 GSA30: Edward Queen petitions for his freedom, 1791 GSA31: Proceedings of the General Chapter at White Marsh, May 1789 GSA32: Fanny & her family, 1815 The slaves were also identified as collateral in the event that Johnson, Batey, and their guarantors defaulted on their payments. Their panic and desperation would be mostly forgotten for more than a century. In all, the Jesuits sold 314 men, women and children over . Alfred Francis Russell (1817-1884), 10th President of Liberia. But when Ms. Riffel, the genealogist, told her where she thought he was buried, Ms. Crump knew exactly where to go. The New York Times would like to hear from people who have done research into their genealogical history. In total, there are 167 countries that still have slavery and around 46 million slaves today, according to the 2016 Global Slavery Index.. [2] As the sole ministers of Catholicism in Maryland at the time, the Jesuit estates became the centers of Catholicism. Anyone can read what you share. Thomas F. Mulledy and the Rev. [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. [70], The Corporation of Roman Catholic Clergymen was created in 1792 to preserve the property of the. 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. It also features audio recordings in which descendants recall memories, from segregated education to family migration away from the South. [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. The hope was to eventually identify the slaves descendants. Thomas F. Mulledy, president of Georgetown from 1829 to 1838, and again from 1845 to 1848, arranged the sale. Revealed: The Slave Sold to Save Georgetown by Stacy M. Brown March 22, 2017 Frank Campbell was sold in 1838 to help save Georgetown. Although modern slavery is not always easy to recognize, it continues to exist in nearly every country. 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.. [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. In November, the university agreed to remove the names of the Rev. Slaves and the products they produced were responsible for well over 50% of the entire GNP of the United States. 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. ", 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.
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