Georgetown University, Jesuits apologize for 1838 sale of slaves
272 men, women and children sold to pay the university’s debts
In a special ceremony Tuesday morning, the Jesuit order that founded Georgetown University formally apologized to the descendants of 272 slaves sold in 1838 to pay off the university’s debts.
More than 100 descendants of these slaves gathered for the Liturgy of Remembrance, Contrition and Hope at ornate Gaston Hall, where the apology was delivered by the Rev. Tim Kesicki, president of the Jesuit Conference of Canada and the United States.
“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, in our thoughts and in our words, in what we have done and what we have failed to do,” Kesicki said. “We are profoundly sorry — it is our very enslavement of another, our very ownership of another, culminating in the tragic sale of 272 women, men and children that remains with us to this day, trapping us in an historic truth, for which we implore mercy and justice, hope and healing.”
Georgetown’s slave-owning past drew national attention last year after a group of students demanded the school change the names of two buildings that honored former university presidents involved in the sale of slaves from Jesuit plantations in Maryland to a Louisiana plantation.
The day of remembrance was set symbolically two days after Easter and a day after Emancipation Day, a holiday that marks the abolition of slavery in the District of Columbia in 1862.
It came seven months after the university announced plans in ac- knowledgment of its connections to the slave trade. Those plans were sparked by a 104-page report from a working group of students and faculty that met for a year before making recommendations. A push toward greater diversity, including the creation of a department of African-American studies, followed.
“We do not seek to move on with this apology, but to move forward with open hearts to respond to the urgent demands of justice, still present in our time,” Georgetown President John J. DeGioia said Tuesday. “We build a more just world with honest reflection on our past and commitment to a faith that does justice.”
After the liturgy, Thomas F. Mulledy Hall was rededicated to Isaac Hawkins, a 65-year-old slave named first in the sales agreement. The William McSherry building was dedicated to Anne Marie Becraft, who founded a school for black girls in Georgetown in the 1820s and joined the Oblate Sisters of Providence, the oldest group of nuns started by women of African descent.
Some of the descendants of those slaves spoke during the ceremony, jointly hosted by the school, the Jesuit order and the Archdiocese of Washington. Sandra Green Thomas recognized the apology as a positive step toward atonement.
“Their pain is unparalleled, their pain is still here. It burns in the soul of every person of African descent in the United States. It lives in people, some of whom have no knowledge of its origins but who cope with the ever-present longing and lack it causes,” said Thomas, president of the GU272 Descendants Association. “So I return — no, we the descendants return — to the home place, to our ancestors’ home place, to recognize contrition, offering forgiveness, hoping for peace, more importantly seeking justice for them and for ourselves.”