A vote happens later this week to create a fund for descendants of the 272 slaves sold by the Jesuit university 181 years ago. It could be a model for other schools.
In September 2014, a Georgetown junior published a, the student newspaper, with the headline: “Georgetown, Financed by Slave Trading.” It unearthed a known but largely forgotten history: that the esteemed Jesuit university had saved itself from financial ruin in 1838 by selling 272 enslaved people.
Top: Graduate student Elizabeth Thomas, her brother, Shepard Thomas, a junior, and Mélisande Short-Colomb, a junior, all descendants of the slaves in the 1838 sale, stand outside Anne Marie Becraft Hall. Bottom: Dr. Marcia Chatelain, an associate professor of history and African American studies and Dr. Adam Rothman, an associate professor of history, were both members of the working group impaneled by university administrators to study slavery and its legacy.
Mélisande Short-Colomb, of New Orleans, is a descendant of the GU272 and a sophomore at the University. One side of her family, the Queens, were part of an 1810 Supreme Court case where Francis Scott Key represented them in their bid for freedom. | André Chung for Politico Magazine Students were already frustrated by the administration’s refusal to erect a memorial honoring the 272 slaves. A student proposal in September 2018 to construct a five-foot-tall, illuminated, marble and granite block, completely free of cost, to be placed near the residence hall built on the segregated cemetery, was politely rebuffed. The president’s office, a representative wrote in an email reviewed by POLITICO, was focused on “developing a framework for dialogue.
Last summer, Thomas, who comes from New Orleans, visited Maringouin, a small town outside of Baton Rouge, The biggest and most popular argument in opposition to the referendum is not against reparations, but rather who should pay. Many students think that the university needs to make a full commitment to the report of the working group, which reads in part, “While we acknowledge that the moral debt of slaveholding and the sale of the enslaved people can never be repaid, we are convinced that reparative justice requires a meaningful financial commitment from the University.
This fight has turned personal for many, including Thomas. “At the end of the day, this is my history,” he said.Rep. John Conyers , the longest-serving member of Congress, has introduced a bill to form a commission that would study slavery in the colonies and early Union and recommend appropriate measures—but it has never been brought up for a vote.
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