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. As part of Georgetown University's Slavery, Memory, and Reconciliation initiative, students in Professor Adam Rothman's fall 2019 UNXD 272 class researched buildings and sites on Georgetown's campus to provide historical context for understanding their significance. [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. [26] Johnson and Batey were to be held jointly and severally liable and each additionally identified a responsible party as a guarantor. From these estates, the Jesuits traveled the countryside on horseback, administering the sacraments and catechizing the Catholic laity. She still wants to know more about Corneliuss beginnings, and about his life as a free man. In 2019, 66 percent of Georgetown students voted in a referendum to add a $27.20 student fee to be. But he said he could not stop thinking about the slaves, whose names had been in Georgetowns archives for decades. Anne Marie Becraft Hall, formerly known as McSherry Hall and renamed Remembrance Hall two years ago, is named for a free woman of color who established a school in the town of Georgetown for black girls. [56] An undergraduate student also brought this to public attention in several articles published by the school newspaper, The Hoya between 2014 and 2015, about the university's relationship with slavery and the slave sale. (Courtesy of Ellender Library) In 1838, two priests who served as president of Georgetown University orchestrated the sale of 272 people to pay off debts at the school. [36], Soon after the sale, Roothaan decided that Mulledy should be removed as provincial superior. 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. 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 Rev. THEY NEED TO BE FOUND AND LINKED. The number of slaves transported to Louisiana (206) and the number left in Maryland (91) add up to 297, not 272, because some of the 272 slaves initially identified to be sold were substituted with replacements. [29], Not all of the 272 slaves intended to be sold to Louisiana met that fate. But he was persuaded to reconsider by several prominent Jesuits, including Father Mulledy, then the influential president of Georgetown who had overseen its expansion, and Father McSherry, who was in charge of the Jesuits Maryland mission. She is outraged that the churchs leaders sanctioned the buying and selling of slaves, and that Georgetown profited from the sale of her ancestors. The grave of Cornelius Hawkins, one of 272 slaves sold by the Jesuits in 1838 to help keep what is now Georgetown University afloat. And she would like to see Corneliuss name, and those of his parents and children, inscribed on a memorial on campus. Join Amazon Prime Watch Thousands of Movies & TV Shows Anytime . [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. Georgetown University in Washington, seen from across the Potomac River. Please contact us at members@americamedia.org with any questions. But this was no ordinary slave sale. Georgetown University Archives The Jesuits had sold off individual slaves before. 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. Slaves were collateral and could be used to mortgage land and other goods. In 2017, Georgetown University held aday of remembranceduring which the president of the Jesuit order apologized to more than 100 descendants attending a contrition liturgy. We encourage you to visit our website, call us at (202)-687-8330, or email us at descendants@georgetown.edu if you are interested in learning more or sharing your ideas and reflections. Georgetown is not the first or only university to own slaves. (Best for messages specifically directed to those editing this profile. [18] The province was sharply divided, with the American-born Jesuits supporting a sale and the missionary European Jesuits opposing on the basis that it was immoral both to sell their patrimonial lands and to materially and morally harm the slaves by selling them into the Deep South, where they did not want to go. [13], Beginning in 1800, there were instances of the Jesuit plantation managers freeing individual slaves or permitting slaves to purchase their freedom. [40] The remaining $17,000, equivalent to approximately $440,000 in 2021,[25] was used to offset part of Georgetown College's $30,000 of debt that had accrued during the construction of buildings during Mulledy's prior presidency of the college. Books and Textbooks One of the greatest ways to advance your life choices and future. [8] In reality, by the early 19th century, the Jesuit plantations were in such a state of mismanagement that the Jesuit Superior General in Rome, Tadeusz Brzozowski, sent Irish Jesuit Peter Kenney to review the operations of the Maryland Mission as a canonical visitor in 1820. Participants in this discussion are: Drew Gilpin Faust, President, Harvard University. While it would seem as if there would be some mention of this in history, it remained largely unknown. [32] An unknown number of slaves may also have run away and escaped transportation. [7] In 1830, the new Superior General, Jan Roothaan, returned Kenney to the United States, specifically to address the question of whether the Jesuits should divest themselves of their rural plantations altogether, which by this time had almost completely paid down their debt. A problem can is not solved without first recognizing it, discussing it and taking steps to rectify the long term damage that continues to this day. Banks would finance land purchases using slaves as collateral. They found the last physical marker of Corneliuss journey at the Immaculate Heart of Mary cemetery, where Ms. Crumps father, grandmother and great-grandfather are also buried. [11] On some plantations, the majority of slaves did not work because they were too young or old. James Van de Veldes. Some tips for making the most of your twilight years. [9] The main crops grown were tobacco and corn. An alumnus, following the protest from afar, wondered if more needed to be done. That building is now known as Freedom Hall. On June 19, 1838, the Maryland Province of the Society of Jesus agreed to sell 272 slaves to two southern Louisiana sugar planters, former governor Henry Johnson and Jesse Batey, for $115,000, equivalent to $2.79 million in 2020, in order to rescue Georgetown University from bankruptcy. Photo by Claire Vail. She later joined the Oblate Sisters of Providence, recognized as the oldest active Roman Catholic sisterhood in the Americas established by women of African descent. Father Mulledy promised his superiors that the slaves would continue to practice their religion. [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. Of the sum, $8,000 was used to satisfy a financial obligation that,[23] following a long-running and contentious dispute, Pope Pius VII had previously determined the Maryland Jesuits owed to Archbishop Ambrose Marchal of Baltimore and his successors. 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). The students organized a protest and a sit-in, using the hashtag #GU272 for the slaves who were sold. 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. WIKITREE PROTECTS MOST SENSITIVE INFORMATION BUT ONLY TO THE EXTENT STATED IN THE TERMS OF SERVICE AND PRIVACY POLICY. Interview: Whats it like to photograph Pope Francis? (The two men would swap positions by 1838.). [27] Johnson allowed these slaves to remain in Maryland because he intended to return and try to buy their spouses as well. Others, including two of Corneliuss uncles, ran away before they could be captured. She feels great sadness as she envisions Cornelius as a young boy, torn from everything he knew. To see the full listing of posts, click on our Blog list, For Black History Month 2020, we posted daily. William McSherry, the college presidents involved in the sale, from two campus buildings. Kenney found the slaves facing arbitrary discipline, a meager diet, pastoral neglect, and engaging in vice. These posts focus on the reality of Black life in America after the Civil War culminating in the landmark Brown v Board of Education that changed so many of the earlier practices. The children with Mr.. It is also emblematic of the complex entanglement of American higher education and religious institutions with slavery. Drawing from campus-based research projects sponsored by the Association of American Colleges and Universities and the Center for Urban Education at the University of Southern California, this invaluable resource provides real-world steps that reinforce primary elements for examining equity in student achievement, while challenging educators to specifically focus on racial equity as a critical lens for institutional and systemic change. 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. At the time, the Catholic Church did not view slaveholding as immoral, said the Rev. Revealed: The Slave Sold to Save Georgetown by Stacy M. Brown March 22, 2017 Frank Campbell was sold in 1838 to help save Georgetown. (Ms. Bayonne-Johnson discovered her connection through an earlier effort by the university to publish records online about the Jesuit plantations.). We can't do it without youAmerica Media relies on generous support from our readers. [15] Alice Clifton (c. 1772-unknown), as an enslaved teenager, she was a defendant in an infanticide trial in 1787. And she learned that Cornelius had worked the soil of a 2,800-acre estate that straddled the Bayou Maringouin. They also established schools on their lands. [29] Some of the initial 272 slaves who were not delivered to Johnson were replaced with substitutes. [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. (Slaves were often donated by prosperous parishioners.) Your email address will not be published. We have committed to finding ways that members of the Georgetown and Descendant communities can be engaged together in efforts that advance racial justice and enable every member of our Georgetown community to confront and engage with Georgetowns history with slavery.. Timothy Kesicki, S.J., president of the Jesuit Conference of Canada and the United States, during a morning Liturgy of Remembrance, Contrition, and Hope. [37] Roothaan was particularly concerned because it had become clear that, contrary to his order, families had been separated by the slaves' new owners. [34] In the years after the sale, it also became clear that most of the slaves were not permitted to carry on their Catholic faith because they were living on plantations far removed from any Catholic church or priest. Alfred Francis Russell (1817-1884), 10th President of Liberia. [50], In 1981, historian Robert Emmett Curran presented at academic conferences a comprehensive research into the Maryland Jesuits' participation in slavery, and published this research in 1983. Use our links to Amazon anytime you shop Amazon. In April 2017, Georgetown renamed buildings that had honored university leaders responsible for selling those enslaved Africans to Louisiana plantations. In total, there are 167 countries that still have slavery and around 46 million slaves today, according to the 2016 Global Slavery Index.. Michelle Miller reports. A Jesuit reports on the slaves' religious life in Louisiana, 1848, Chatham Plantation, Ascension Parish, Louisiana. 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. And the 1838 sale worth about $3.3 million in todays dollars was organized by two of Georgetowns early presidents, both Jesuit priests. [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. [30] In total, only 206 are known to have been transported to Louisiana. Cornelius had originally been shipped to a plantation so far from a church that he had married in a civil ceremony. [45] Patrick and Woolfolk's slaves were then sold in July 1859 to Emily Sparks, the widow of Austin Woolfolk. In the uproar that followed, he was called to Rome and reassigned. On Juneteenth, the debate comes to Congress. [31][b] There are several reasons many slaves were left behind. Georgetown Reflects on Slavery, Memory, and Reconciliation Georgetown is engaged in a long-term and ongoing process to more deeply understand and respond to the university's role in the injustice of slavery and the legacies of enslavement and segregation in our nation. [8] These consisted primarily of the plantations of White Marsh in Prince George's County, St. Inigoes and Newtown Manor in St. Mary's County, St. Thomas Manor in Charles County, and Bohemia Manor in Cecil County. Maxine Crump, 69, a descendant of one of the slaves sold by the Jesuits, in a Louisiana sugar cane field where researchers believe her ancestor once worked. John DeGioia, President, Georgetown University. The two women drove on the narrow roads that line the green, rippling sugar cane fields in Iberville Parish. To see the posts, click here. A photo of the slave cabins at Laurel Valley in Thibodaux is part of the GU272 Memory Project. 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. Mismanaged and inefficient, the Maryland plantations no longer offered a reliable source of income for Georgetown College, which had been founded in 1789. But priests at the Jesuit plantations recounted the panic and fear they witnessed when the slaves departed. Password reset instructions will be sent to your registered email address. 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. The 1970s saw an increase in public scholarship on the Maryland Jesuits' slave ownership. We shop for the best values for you. You are here: blueberry crumble cake delicious magazine; hendersonville nc city council candidates 2021; list of slaves sold by georgetown university . The condition of slaves on the plantations varied over time, as did the condition of the Jesuits living with them. To pay that debt, the university sold 272 slaves the very people that helped build the school itself. The sale of 272 slaves in 1838 rescued the College from crushing debt. . The presidents of Harvard University and Georgetown University discuss their institutions historic ties to slavery in a conversation with Ta-Nehisi Coates. This has made people reluctant to see the past and this has had a long term harm by remaining hidden and allowed to fester. More than a dozen universities including Brown, Columbia, Harvard and the University of Virginia have publicly recognized their ties to slavery and the slave trade. But the revelations about her lineage and the church she grew up in have unleashed a swirl of emotions. in Fr. [41] The Jesuits never received the total $115,000 that was owed under the agreement. Slavery was much more than the theft of labor; it was the deprivation of liberty for which this country professes so loudly. He addressed his concerns to Father Mulledy, who three years earlier had returned to his post as president of Georgetown. Although the working group was established in August, it was student demonstrations at Georgetown in the fall that helped to galvanize alumni and gave new urgency to the administrations efforts. [5], On June 19, 1838, Mulledy, Johnson, and Batey signed articles of agreement formalizing the sale. 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. If youre already a subscriber or donor, thank you! [70], The Corporation of Roman Catholic Clergymen was created in 1792 to preserve the property of the. Cardinal McElroy on radical inclusion for L.G.B.T. 2008 - 2023 INTERESTING.COM, INC. Shoes and clothing were made in the North and shipped to be used by the enslaved people.