Xavier’s Graham speaks up about ‘racial truth-telling’
Xavier University president Rev. Michael Graham, S.J., says the Jesuits’ pledge to raise $100 million for the descendants of enslaved people they once owned is an “important milestone.”
The amount represents the largest financial pledge thus far from a U.S. religious institution, as a variety of them nationwide seek to make amends for their past involvement in slavery and racial oppression.
The U.s.-based branch of Jesuits also has a broader goal of reaching $1 billion from an array of donors in pursuit of racial justice and racial healing.
Graham referenced a New York Times article about the pledge in a Wednesday letter to university students and staff.
“This announcement is a good reminder of both the work that we have done together in the last several years on the topic of racial truth-telling, healing and reconciliation as well as the work in front of us to do,” Graham wrote.
The pledge is a product of discussions between Jesuit leaders, Georgetown
University and descendants of 272 enslaved African American men sold in 1838 to rescue the university from potential financial ruin.
The money will go to the newly established Descendants Truth and Reconciliation Foundation, to oversee fundraising and allocate grants. Already, the Jesuits have placed $15 million in a trust that will finance the effort.
“The proceeds of this foundation will be used to promote racial healing and transformation in our nation, provide educational opportunities for descendants of Jesuit slaveholding and offer further assistants to those in greatest need,” Rev. Brian Paulson, S.J., provincial superior of the Midwest province of the Society of Jesus, said in the Monday announcement.
Details on how the funds will be spent remain to be worked out. But the acting president of the foundation, Joe Stewart, said Tuesday roughly half of the grant money would go to organizations and initiatives seeking to promote racial justice and reconciliation. Some other funds would provide scholarships and other educational support for descendants of the 272.
Stewart is one of more than 1,000 descendants of Isaac Hawkins, an enslaved man who was among those sold in 1838.
Xavier has its own troubled history with slavery. Graham said a 2016 investigation by the Times into Georgetown’s slave sale triggered an inquiry here in Cincinnati. It was then discovered that the university’s founder, Edward Fenwick, held enslaved peoples prior to becoming the first bishop of Cincinnati. Fenwick was named the first Cincinnati bishop in 1821, according to the Archdiocese of Cincinnati.
A history guide on the university’s website details other connections to slavery, including several university presidents after Fenwick who owned peoples.
In response, the university established the Stained Glass Initiative and compiled an ongoing list of recommendations for diversity and inclusion.
“One of the most anticipated recommendations from that group, the renaming of Fenwick Place, will be accomplished this coming summer,” Graham wrote in the Wednesday letter. “I have no doubt that fresh leadership in the several offices which coordinate Xavier’s diversity efforts may very well want to revisit Xavier’s historical connections with slavery in the future as we learn more about those connections and to then imagine what new initiatives might be undertaken to build on the legacy of The Stained Glass Initiative.”
In January, Xavier University police said a Black Lives Matter flag was vandalized and signs from a white supremacist group were found across campus. Officials said police removed the material and launched an investigation.
“I feel a strong sense of violation, really desecration, in response to this attack. I am aware, nonetheless, that part of my privilege as a white man is not fully feeling the injury and impact of these acts,” Graham said at the time. “These acts are intended to intimidate, to threaten, and to assault.”
Graham has served as Xavier’s president since 2001. He will retire this spring and Colleen Hanycz, PH.D., will take over as the university’s first layperson and first female president.
The Associated Press contributed.