The truth was closer to home than anyone knew", "272 Slaves Were Sold to Save Georgetown. None of those conditions were met, university officials said. [32] An unknown number of slaves may also have run away and escaped transportation. Georgetown and the Society of Jesus Maryland Province have issued an apology for their role in this action to more than 100 descendants who had been traced at the time of the apology. It lists the slaves by name according to plantation where they lived, identifies family groups, and records which ship (1, 2, or 3) they were shipped in. John DeGioia, President, Georgetown University. The institution came under fire last fall, with students demanding justice for the slaves in the 1838 sale. She feels great sadness as she envisions Cornelius as a young boy, torn from everything he knew. There are no surviving images of Cornelius, no letters or journals that offer a look into his last hours on a Jesuit plantation in Maryland. [27] Johnson allowed these slaves to remain in Maryland because he intended to return and try to buy their spouses as well. [5] The first record of slaves working Jesuit plantations in Maryland dates to 1711, but it is likely that there were slave laborers on the plantations a generation before then. The two feared that because the public would not accept additional manumitted blacks, the Jesuits would be forced to sell their slaves en masse. (Best for messages specifically directed to those editing this profile. But the popes order, which did not explicitly address slave ownership or private sales like the one organized by the Jesuits, offered scant comfort to Cornelius and the other slaves. 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. 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. [33], Almost immediately, the sale, which was one of the largest slave sales in the history of the United States,[28] became a scandal among American Catholics. 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. At Georgetown, slavery and scholarship were inextricably linked. To see information on Juneteenth, click here. Tweet. She prides herself on being unflappable. Timothy Kesicki, S.J., president of the Jesuit Conference of Canada and the United States, during a morning Liturgy of Remembrance, Contrition, and Hope. The college relied on Jesuit plantations in Maryland to help finance its operations, university officials say. [52] In 2014, renovation began on Ryan and Mulledy Halls to convert them into a student residence. However, the total number of slaves is only one way to measure the level of slavery in a country. The internal slave trade in the United States, also known as the domestic slave trade, the Second Middle Passage and the interregional slave trade, was the term for the domestic trade of enslaved people within the United States that reallocated slaves across states during the Antebellum period.It was most significant after 1808, when the importation of slaves was prohibited. All of this was new to Ms. Crump, except for the name Cornelius or Neely, as Cornelius was known. Following Batey's death, his West Oak plantation and the slaves living there were sold in January 1853 to Tennessee politician Washington Barrow and Barrow's son, John S. Barrow, a resident of Baton Rouge, Louisiana. [137] Thomas C. Hindman (1828-1868), American politician and Confederate general. This resulted in families being split for economic reasons with no consideration of human relationships. Georgetown is not the only institution that has prospered on the backs of enslaved people. [46] Due to financial difficulties, Johnson sold half his property, including some of the slaves he had purchased in 1838, to Philip Barton Key in 1844. So in June 1838, he negotiated a deal with Henry Johnson, a member of the House of Representatives, and Jesse Batey, a landowner in Louisiana, to sell Cornelius and the others. [19] At the congregation, the senior Jesuits in Maryland voted six to four to proceed with a sale of the slaves,[20] and Dubuisson submitted to the Superior General a summary of the moral and financial arguments on either side of the debate. 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. Central concepts and key points are illustrated through campus examples. Now students, professors and alumni want to know what happened to those men and women and what the university will do moving forward. On June 19, 1838, the Maryland Province of the Society of Jesus agreed to sell 272 slaves to two Louisiana planters, Henry Johnson and Jesse Batey, for $115,000 (equivalent to approximately $2.96million in 2021). 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? Documents provide the factual framework, but people supply the human story.. To this day the search continues. Families would not be separated. Check out some of the. Since youre a frequent reader of our website, we want to be able to share even more great, As a frequent reader of our website, you know how important, Georgetown students voted to pay for reparations. [37] Roothaan was particularly concerned because it had become clear that, contrary to his order, families had been separated by the slaves' new owners. The students organized a protest and a sit-in, using the hashtag #GU272 for the slaves who were sold. By the 1830s, however, their physical and religious conditions had improved considerably. After the sale, Cornelius vanishes from the public record until 1851 when his trail finally picks back up on a cotton plantation near Maringouin, La. From these estates, the Jesuits traveled the countryside on horseback, administering the sacraments and catechizing the Catholic laity. The site includes a searchable database with genealogies of descendants who have died. Leaders in policy, business, technology, science, history, arts and culture engaged with top journalists on the most consequential issues of our time. Thomas F. Mulledy, president of Georgetown from 1829 to 1838, and again from 1845 to 1848, arranged the sale. The records describe runaways, harsh plantation conditions and the anguish voiced by some Jesuits over their participation in a system of forced servitude. Timothy Kesicki, S.J., president of the Jesuit Conference of Canada and the United States, during a morning Liturgy of Remembrance, Contrition, and Hope. 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. [13], Beginning in 1800, there were instances of the Jesuit plantation managers freeing individual slaves or permitting slaves to purchase their freedom. In November, the university agreed to remove the names of the Rev. We pray with you today because we have greatly sinned and because we are profoundly sorry. This message was delivered to more than 100 descendants of the original enslaved people who had been sol to finance the institution. Other Jesuits voiced their anger to the Archbishop of Baltimore, Samuel Eccleston, who conveyed this to Roothaan. 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. A microcosm of the whole history of American slavery, Dr. Rothman said. Much more than a way to chat. The Society of Jesus, whose members are known as Jesuits, established its first presence in the Mid-Atlantic region of the Thirteen Colonies alongside the first settlers of the British Province of Maryland, which had been founded as a Catholic colony and refuge. The Rev. This was a great cause of the wealth of the slaveowners who took advantage of land stolen from the original owners, the Native Americans who had lived here for centuries. While the plantations were initially worked by indentured servants, as the institution of indentured servitude began to fade away in Maryland, African slaves replaced indentured servants as the primary workers on the plantations. Their panic and desperation would be mostly forgotten for more than a century. The Jesuits had sold off individual slaves before. As a result, he had to sell his property in the 1840s and renegotiate the terms of his payment. [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. This sale was the culmination of a contentious and long-running debate among the Maryland Jesuits over whether to keep, sell, or free their slaves, and whether to focus on their rural estates or on their growing urban missions, including their schools. 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. In letters written to Jesuit superiors in Maryland, one priest who accidentally crossed paths with the slaves in Louisiana after the sale bemoaned the fact that the slaves couldnt practice Catholicism.. In fact, Harvard, Columbia, Brown, University of Virginia did as well. [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. We also posted a 5 part mini-series on the 100th anniversary of one of the most horrific massacres in the history of America. The ship manifest of the Katharine Jackson, available in full at the. Georgetown and the College of the Holy Cross renamed buildings, and the Jesuit Conference of Canada and the United States pledged to raise $100 million for the descendants of slaves owned by the Jesuits. On Juneteenth, the debate comes to Congress. WIKITREE PROTECTS MOST SENSITIVE INFORMATION BUT ONLY TO THE EXTENT STATED IN THE TERMS OF SERVICE AND PRIVACY POLICY. Jesse Batey died in 1851 and the White Oak Plantation was sold. He demanded that Mulledy travel to Rome to answer the charges of disobeying orders and promoting scandal. [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. But he said he could not stop thinking about the slaves, whose names had been in Georgetowns archives for decades. people, women and others in the Catholic Church, Cardinal Cupich: Critics of Pope Francis Latin Mass restrictions should listen to JPII. [136] Eufrosina Hinard (born 1777), a free black woman in New Orleans, she owned slaves and leased them to others. Other slaves were sold locally in Maryland so that they would not be separated from their spouses who were either free or owned by non-Jesuits, in compliance with Roothaan's order. Alfred Francis Russell (1817-1884), 10th President of Liberia. 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. James Van de Veldes. (Valuable Plantation and Negroes for Sale, read one newspaper advertisement in 1852.). (Slaves were often donated by prosperous parishioners.) She is outraged that the churchs leaders sanctioned the buying and selling of slaves, and that Georgetown profited from the sale of her ancestors. He might have disappeared from view again for a time, save for something few could have counted on: his deep, abiding faith. 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. They change every day, so check often. [47], While the 1838 slave sale gave rise to scandal at the time, the event eventually faded out of the public awareness. A photo of the slave cabins at Laurel Valley in Thibodaux is part of the GU272 Memory Project. Jesuit priests in Maryland sold 272 slaves to Louisiana plantations in 1838 to fund Georgetown . What Does It Owe Their Descendants? CONTENT MAY BE COPYRIGHTED BY WIKITREE COMMUNITY MEMBERS. Descendants are learning new links to their pasts as a result of the project. [43][44] In 1856, Washington Barrow sold the slaves he purchased from Batey to William Patrick and Joseph B. Woolfolk of Iberville Parish. [35] He ordered McSherry to inform Mulledy that he had been removed as provincial superior, and that if Mulledy refused to step down, he would be dismissed from the Society of Jesus. Slaves worked on the Jesuit plantations in Maryland that helped to sustain the Jesuits' religious and educational mission. One building was renamed for Isaac Hawkins, first on the list of the 272 human beings sold in 1838. An inspector scrutinized the cargo on Dec. 6, 1838. A fantastic research tool with video camera, navigation programs and so much more. Books and Textbooks One of the greatest ways to advance your life choices and future. [24], Mulledy quickly made arrangements to carry out the sale. in Fr. However, the remainder of the money received did go to funding Jesuit formation. [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. While the school did own a small number of slaves over its early decades,[13] its main relationship with slavery was the leasing of slaves to work on campus,[14] a practice that continued past the 1838 slave sale. He was about 48 then, a father, a husband, a farm laborer and, finally, a free man. The sale prompted immediate outcry from fellow Jesuits. [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. [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. In 2019, 66 percent of Georgetown students voted in a referendum to add a $27.20 student fee to be. Georgetown Jesuits enslaved her ancestors. But priests at the Jesuit plantations recounted the panic and fear they witnessed when the slaves departed. 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. [27], The articles of agreement listed each of the slaves being sold by name. Are You A Liturgist With A Passion to Form Young Adults? But when Ms. Riffel, the genealogist, told her where she thought he was buried, Ms. Crump knew exactly where to go. Thomas Hibbert (1710-1780), English merchant, he became rich from slave labor on his Jamaican plantations. 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. Census of slaves to be sold in 1838 This is the original list of slaves from the Jesuit plantations compiled in preparation for the sale in 1838. Some wrote emotional letters to Roothaan denouncing the morality of the sale. For Black History Month 2021, we focused on Black Medical Achievements, Inventors and Scientists.To see those posts, click here. Georgetown has renamed one of its buildings Isaac Hawkins Hall named after the first enslaved on the list of the account of the sale. 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.. The children with Mr.. Many institutions owned slaves and Georgetown University was no exception. It is better to prevent than to attempt to remedy. That building is now known as Freedom Hall. Joseph Zwinge (identified as "J.Z.") Now comes the task of making amends. [29] Some of the initial 272 slaves who were not delivered to Johnson were replaced with substitutes. [53], With work complete, in August 2015, university president John DeGioia sent an open letter to the university announcing the opening of the new student residence, which also related Mulledy's role in the 1838 slave sale after stepping down as president of the university. [11] On some plantations, the majority of slaves did not work because they were too young or old. Your email address will not be published. And she would like to see Corneliuss name, and those of his parents and children, inscribed on a memorial on campus. As early as the 1780s, Dr. Rothman found, they openly discussed the need to cull their stock of human beings. [27] The agreement provided that 51 slaves would be sent to the port of Alexandria, Virginia in order to be shipped to Louisiana. 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. By the 1840s, word was trickling back to Washington that the slaves new owners had broken their promises. Keynote || Radcliffe Institute WELCOME Lizabeth Cohen, Dean, Radcliffe Institute, and Howard Mumford Jones Professor of American Studies, Harvard University OPENING REMARKS (12:07) Drew Gilpin Faust, President and Lincoln Professor of History, Harvard University KEYNOTE (15:51) Ta-Nehisi Coates, Journalist; National Correspondent, the Atlantic: Author, Between the World and Me (Spiegel & Grau, 2015) and The Beautiful Struggle: A Father, Two Sons, and an Unlikely Road to Manhood (Spiegel & Grau, 2008) Conversation between Ta-Nehisi Coates and Drew Gilpin Faust (34:37). We see that slavery was MUCH more than depriving people of their liberty and theft of their services, it was the cruel and long lasting emotional devastation of selling away loved ones, taking indecent liberties, cruel and inhumane treatment and so much more. This coincided with a protest by a group of students against keeping Mulledy's and McSherry's names on the buildings the day before. (The two men would swap positions by 1838.). Against the conditions agreed upon, families were separated due to this sale. Now, for the first time, Ms. Crump understood its origins. Your source for jobs, books, retreats, and much more. This sale was overseen by Provincial Superior William McSherry and Friar Thomas Mulledy. [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. Several substitutions were made to the initial list of those to be sold, and 91 of those initially listed remained in Maryland. Interview: Whats it like to photograph Pope Francis? [54] Despite the decades of scholarship on the subject, this revelation came as a surprise to many Georgetown University members,[48][55] and some criticized the retention of Mulledy's name on the building. It will challenge and change your understanding of what we were as Americans and of what we are. Chicago Tribune In this groundbreaking historical expos, Douglas A. Blackmon brings to light one of the most shameful chapters in American history an Age of Neo slavery that thrived from the aftermath of the Civil War through the dawn of World War II. [16] Mulledy in particular felt that the plantations were a drain on the Maryland Jesuits; he urged selling the plantations as well as the slaves, believing the Jesuits were only able to support either their estates or their schools in growing urban areas: Georgetown College in Washington, D.C. and St. John's College in Frederick, Maryland. History must be faced in order to heal and move forward! If youre already a subscriber or donor, thank you! 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. WASHINGTON The human cargo was loaded on ships at a bustling wharf in the nations capital, destined for the plantations of the Deep South. Another building has been renamed Anne Marie Becraft Hall in honor of a free Black woman who established a school in the town of Georgetown for Girls of color. [10], Due to these extensive landholdings, the Propaganda Fide in Rome had come to view the American Jesuits negatively, believing they lived lavishly like manorial lords. During this time, the Jesuits funded some of the most prestigious institutions of higher education in America in part through profits earned on their plantations. 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. [9] The main crops grown were tobacco and corn. 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. And the money raised by the sale would not be used to pay off debt or for operating expenses. Twenty-seven years earlier, a document dated June 19, 1838, showed that Maryland Jesuit priests sold 272 slaves to the owners of Louisiana plantations. The Jesuits decided that the elderly would not be sold south and instead would be permitted to remain in Maryland. They could then make 40% on the labor of the slave and pay the bank 8%. June 1838 the University benefited from the sale of 272 slaves, some as young as 2 months old to finance the ailing institution. Key then transferred this property to John R. Thompson. Georgetown University was an active participant in the slave trade selling upwards of 272 slaves from their Maryland run plantation to the deep south in an effort to support the then struggling university in 1838 according to The New York Times. In all, the Jesuits sold 314 men, women and children over . A notation on the second page indicates that it was discovered by Fr. The slaves were also identified as collateral in the event that Johnson, Batey, and their guarantors defaulted on their payments. Some slaves pleaded for rosaries as they were rounded up, praying for deliverance. https://www.nytimes.com/2016/04/17/us/georgetown-university-search-for-slave-descendants.html. Were sorry registration isn't working smoothly for you. [66] In 2020, the college removed Mulledy's name. Shoes and clothing were made in the North and shipped to be used by the enslaved people. Freedom Hall became Isaac Hawkins Hall, after the first slave listed on the articles of agreement for the 1838 sale. [21], Meanwhile, in order to fund the province's operations,[22] McSherry, as the first provincial superior of the Maryland Province,[17] began selling small groups of slaves to planters in Louisiana in 1835, arguing that it was not possible to sell the slaves to local planters and that the buyers had assured him that they would not mistreat the slaves and would permit them to practice their Catholic faith. As a frequent reader of our website, you know how important Americas voice is in the conversation about the church and the world. She still wants to know more about Corneliuss beginnings, and about his life as a free man. 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. The Jesuits used the proceeds to benefit then-Georgetown College. It is also emblematic of the complex entanglement of American higher education and religious institutions with slavery. Logging in will also give you access to commenting features on our website. 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. [45] Patrick and Woolfolk's slaves were then sold in July 1859 to Emily Sparks, the widow of Austin Woolfolk. [4] Many of these slaves were gifted to the Jesuits, while others were purchased. 2008 - 2023 INTERESTING.COM, INC. 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. She was the citys first black woman television anchor. Georgetown is not the first or only university to own slaves. Corneliuss extended family was split, with his aunt Nelly and her daughters shipped to one plantation, and his uncle James and his wife and children sent to another, records show. You are here: blueberry crumble cake delicious magazine; hendersonville nc city council candidates 2021; list of slaves sold by georgetown university . The sale of these 272 slaves, known as the GU272, saved the university from foreclosure. Join Amazon Prime Watch Thousands of Movies & TV Shows Anytime . 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. [36], Soon after the sale, Roothaan decided that Mulledy should be removed as provincial superior. 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. 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. Dr. Rothman, the Georgetown historian, heard about Mr. Cellinis efforts and let him know that he and several of his students were also tracing the slaves. [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. 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. Slavery was much more than the theft of labor; it was the deprivation of liberty for which this country professes so loudly. Your email address will not be published. What can you do to make amends?. The 1970s saw an increase in public scholarship on the Maryland Jesuits' slave ownership. Some tips for making the most of your twilight years. But the revelations about her lineage and the church she grew up in have unleashed a swirl of emotions. Share with your friends! Youll never know where you came from, said Mlisande Short-Colomb, a descendant of the group of slaves, in a statement about the project.