Previously, the Maryland Jesuits had held slaves on its plantations in the state since the turn of the 18th century, and had sold slaves in 1817 and in 1835 and afterwards. After the 1838 slave sale, the order continued to own slaves on its plantations and continued to house slaves on the Georgetown University campus.
In September 2015, Georgetown University formed a working group to research the conditions surrounding the 1838 sale and the fate of the slaves owned and sold by the Maryland Province of the Jesuit order. Since then, the group has also held discussions within the Georgetown community and has started to reach out to the tens of thousands of descendants of slaves sold by the Jesuit order.
The group has also recommended, in addition to holding a reconciliation service and rededicating several of its buildings, that the university extend preferential admission status and additional financial support to descendants of the 272 persons sold in 1838. Additionally, the working group has suggested the establishment of a public monument to honor the memory of the 272 persons sold in order to benefit the university.
On Thursday the university's president, John DeGioia, apologized for the school's historical involvement in the slave trade. Fr. Timothy Kesicki, president of the Jesuit Conference of Canada and the United States, also made a heartfelt apology to God and the descendants of the 272 slaves sold by the Maryland Jesuits.
"We cannot hide from this truth, bury this truth, ignore this truth. Slavery remains the original evil of our republic, an evil that our university was complicit in, a sin that tore apart families, that through great violence denied and rejected the dignity and humanity of our fellow sisters and brothers," DeGioia said. "We lay this truth bare, in sorrowful apology, in communal reckoning."
"We betrayed the very name of Jesus, for whom our least society was named," Fr. Kesicki recalled of the 1838 sale at the liturgy of contrition.
"Now, nearly 200 years later, we know that we cannot heal from this tragic history alone," he continued. "We have no right to [forgiveness]. It is yours to restore," he said to the descendants present at the liturgy.
One descendant, Sandra Green Thomas, explained how the university's involvement in the slave trade was part of a societal injustice perpetrated against an entire race, the effects of which are present today.
"All African-Americans have hungered and thirsted for the bounty of the promise that is America, the promise of the equality of man, the pursuit of happiness, those God-given and unalienable rights," she said at Tuesday's liturgy, "but for so many of us," they only saw "the meagre scraps" of that bounty.
"To be denied those things that rightfully come from the labor of our bodies, to have our minds deprived of the tools to develop to their potential, to live under soul-crushing injustice, stress, and deprivation, surely these are sins against the word of God and therefore God Himself," she continued.
"These people, the 272 men, women and children we remember today, endured all of these. Their descendants are still experiencing them today."
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Both university officials and descendants of the 272 slaves acknowledged that the school's actions – financial aid and granting priority admission to descendants of the slaves – and the liturgy and dedication mark only the beginning of a reconciliation process that must continue forward.
"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," DeGioia said, citing Fr. Kesicki's call to "move forward" and not "move on."
Dr. Marcia Chatelain, a professor of history and African American Studies at Georgetown and a member of the working group, was blunt about the challenge facing the parties to reconcile and redress past wrongs: "How do you make repairs for something that's irreparable?"
Nevertheless, she hoped that other universities and institutions involved in the slave trade would follow Georgetown's example and start addressing their past. "American Catholics have a long history of ignoring their faith in order to conform with the demands of the culture," she said.
"I think that when we think about race and racial justice we see that the Church has really failed in its responsibility of really benefitting from the institution of slavery and reproducing the systems of racial injustice." Catholics should ask themselves if they see "churches as a place where justice is done or as a place that obstructs justice," she added.
The university's road to reconciliation, however, has been challenging in itself. Some of the descendants of the slave sale, like Delores Williams Johnson, noted their hurt and frustration with Georgetown for initially moving forward with reconciliation plans without contacting the descendants themselves. In response, Johnson, a descendant of Isaac Hawkins with roots in Louisiana, helped to co-found the Legacy of GU272 Alliance, a nonprofit group that helps locate and identify each descendant of the slave sale.