Illustration BY: KARLA LEYJA/THE HOYA Illustration BY: Mina Lee/THE HOYA
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TRACING THE 272
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TRACING THE 272 Table of Contents Working Group Checklist ................................................. 3 180 Years Later, GU Slave Descendants Expand Roots ............. 4
FRIDAY, AUGUST 31, 2018
PRODUCTION STAFF Ian Scoville Editor-in-Chief Kathryn Baker and Christian Paz Executive Editors Anna Kovacevich Managing Editor
Portraits From Louisiana ...................................................................... 5
Anna Kooken Design Editor
Maringouin Grapples With Education Gap ........................ 6
Cat Kendall Copy Chief
Human Remains Found During Construction of Arrupe .............. 7
Caroline Pappas Photo Editor
Uncovering Past and Present: My Trip Back Home ........................... 8
Aly Pachter Issue Editor
Legacy Is Everything, But Legacy Status Is Not Enough .................. 9 On Campus, Names Carry the Weight of History ........................ 10 Descendants Demand More Reparative Action ........................ 11
Letter From the Editor Dear readers, While driving into Maringouin, La., the land seems to stretch endlessly in each direction, broken up only by oak trees that used to delineate the borders of different plantations surrounding the town. It’s impossible to look away from the land or to ignore the history behind it. Once you turn off the highway and pass a sign welcoming you into Maringouin, there is an almost immediate switch from being an observer to becoming the observed. The town itself is home to about 1,000 residents, all of whom seem to know each other and many of whom who are related, descended from the families that planted their roots generations ago. Newcomers are noticeable. We came to Maringouin as a team of nine Georgetown students, investigating the legacy of what had originally brought people to the area. Specifically, we traced the sale of 272 men, women and children from the Society of Jesus’ plantations in Maryland to four plantations in Louisiana — two of which straddle the town of Maringouin — and the lasting consequences of this sale that saved Georgetown from financial ruin. Despite the fact that our team entered the town as outsiders, the Maringouin community and the greater network of descendants whom we met with across Louisiana could not have been more welcoming. To all those who trusted us to tell their stories, we are immensely grateful. Thank you. As a student journalist and member of Georgetown’s community, I have reported on the university’s efforts to reconcile with its ties to slavery since the fall of my freshman year in 2015. As I begin my senior year, I wanted to ensure that students carry forward forming their own relationships with the descendant community. By bringing the stories of descendants in Louisiana to our readers, we hope to bridge the gap between our lives here on campus and the lives of those still affected by the sale 180 years ago. As Georgetown has committed itself as an institution dedicated to reconciling with the impact and resulting obligations of the legacy of slavery, it is crucial to investigate and understand what that legacy is and how it is currently manifesting. This project would not be possible without a grant from the Fund for Investigative Journalism and fundraising efforts through SaxaFund. Thank you to these organizations and to you, our readers, for supporting us. Aly Pachter
Contributing Editors and Photographers Derrick Arthur (NHS ’19), Lisa Burgoa (SFS ’19), Will Cromarty (COL ’21), Karla Leyja (COL ’19), Eliza Phillips (COL ’21), Margo Snipe (COL ’20), Elizabeth Thomas (GRD ’20), Shepard Thomas (COL ’20)
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TRACING THE 272
WORKING CHECKLIST APOLOGY Issue an apology to the descendants of the GU272 on Georgetown’s involvement in slavery. ENGAGING THE WHOLE UNIVERSITY Broadcast the results of the working group through all communication channels at the university’s disposal. Create and maintain an enhanced interactive website to reflect all activities of the Working Group on Slavery, Memory and Reconciliation. INCREASED ENGAGEMENT WITH DESCENDANT COMMUNITY
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In the summer of 2016, the Working Group on Slavery, Memory and Reconciliation published a report to University President John J. DeGioia with recommendations on how Georgetown University should reconcile its past with slavery and cultivate relationships with the descendant community. Below is a checklist of how many of the recommendations have been taken on and executed by the institution in the past two years since the report’s publication.
Preserve the names of the enslaved people either as part of the public memorial or as a display inside the renamed halls, and mark sites on our campus associated with the history of slavery with informative plaques. Associate the names of the enslaved with scholarships dedicated to correcting the legacy of racial injustice. RESEARCH, TEACHING AND PUBLIC HISTORY Foster dialogue across departments and centers to address contemporary issues related to the history of slavery, such as our nation’s system of mass incarceration and health disparities.
Meet with descendants in Washington, D.C., and home communities. Foster genealogical research to help descendants explore their family histories. Commission an oral history project with descendant communities. Explore the feasibility of admission and financial aid initiatives that might be established for the descendant community. Hold public events to explore more deeply the story of Jesuit slaveholding and its legacies at Georgetown and beyond. Solicit the input of the descendants as the university progresses in its engagement with this history and especially as the university considers how it will memorialize the enslaved people sold in 1838. MEMORIALIZATION: ENDING ANONYMITY AND NEGLECT Rename Freedom Hall — previously Mulledy Hall — and Remembrance Hall — previously McSherry Hall — to Isaac Hawkins Hall and Anne Marie Becraft Hall. Erect a public memorial to the enslaved persons and families outside the renamed halls.
Incorporate the Historical Walking Tour of Black Georgetown into programming for new students. INVESTMENT IN DIVERSITY Intensify outreach to prospective black students, especially from Maryland, D.C. and Louisiana. Grant the descendants of those owned by the Maryland Province an advantage in the admissions process. Increase financial assistance to those who demonstrate need with the goal of eliminating financial barriers and making Georgetown more affordable, especially to eligible descendants of the Maryland Jesuit slaves. Devote attention, funding and resources to assessing and improving the racial climate on campus, including the use of racial and ethnic climate surveys and sensitivity training for all members of the community. FUTURE OF THE WORKING GROUP The working group recommends that the university president designate a steering committee to oversee implementation of the recommendations that he accepts. This steering committee could include, for example, representation from the descendant community in addition to students, faculty and staff.
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BALLET REVIEW 180 Years Later, GU Slave Descendants Expand Roots margo snipe Hoya Staff Writer
Maringouin, La. — Fourteen years ago, the family of Lee Baker, a 63-year-old theology teacher in New Orleans, unlocked a secret in their family history: They were descendants of slaves sold by the Society of Jesus in Maryland to four plantations in Louisiana in 1838 — a sale that saved Georgetown University from financial ruin. Baker’s family’s Catholic roots, which had paved the way for generations of black Catholics who would continue the tradition of strong faith, went deeper than they had ever thought. Baker is the great-greatgrandson of Nace and Bibey Butler, two of the 272 black people who toiled in the Maryland plantations as slaves of the Jesuits and were eventually forced aboard the Katherine Jackson, a ship headed south to Louisiana. “It was always peculiar to us, why did they have in this little small swampy area outside of Baton Rouge so many black American Catholics?” Baker said in an interview with The Hoya.
Sold South
Most of the 272 ended up at plantations in one of three Louisiana parishes: Ascension, Terrebonne and Iberville. Henry Johnson, the governor of Louisiana from 1824 to 1828, owned two plantations around Maringouin, which he farmed with slave labor, including that of slaves purchased from the Jesuits. Johnson worked with Jesse Batey to buy and transport 54 of the 272 Jesuits slaves in July 1838 to labor in Batey’s cotton, sugar and rice plantations. Thirteen years later, those slaves were sold to the Barrow family, whose plantation was situated in Maringouin, in Iberville Parish. For those currently connected to Maringouin, a town of fewer than 1,100 residents located about a half-hour drive from Baton Rouge, the town’s dark history is not out of sight. “Maringouin is still very much so a time capsule, in the best and worst sense,” said Lauren Crump (GRD ’18), a descendant of the GU272 and a graduate student at Georgetown. Maringouin’s current mayor, Demi Vorise, is the first
black female to hold the position. In an interview with The Hoya, she described the community as tightknit. “We’re a very small rural community,” Vorise said. “The majority of this community is family. Those descendants, their families are here in numbers.” Sugar cane-packed fields, segregated cemeteries and the ghastly existence of a hanging tree just beyond the town limits mark its history with slavery and the Jim Crow-era South. “I think about it all the time,” said Bertrand Woolfolk, whose great-grandmother used to work as a slave in Maringouin’s sugar cane fields. “I think about that in the hot nights, the cold nights, everything. That’s a rough one ... that’s a hard pill to swallow. Those people had to be tough.” To this day, Maringouin remains burdened by racial segregation in a town that is 84 percent black and 16 percent white, according to demographics data released by the U.S. Census Bureau in December 2017.
Unlocking a Secret Connection
Through the genealogical work conducted by his cousin Patricia Bayonne-Johnson and aunt Dr. Onita Esthes-Hicks, Baker has learned more about what life was like for the people sold by the Jesuits from Maryland to plantation owners in Louisiana. According to family lore, before the ship left the dock that day in 1838, two of Baker’s ancestors pleaded to the Jesuits on shore for rosary beads to take with them on the voyage, but when they asked for the beads, it was unclear who, if anyone, was listening. “What greater act of heresy could there be than what the violations of the very tenets of Catholicism did to the dignity and the life of a human person?” Baker asked. “You enslaved somebody. What greater heresy can there be than that?” Baker said his faith did not sway while learning about his family’s origins — and the origins of Catholicism in his family and he trace these characteristics of devotion and resilience back to his ancestors, who did more than endure in the face of the horrors of U.S. slavery: His family flourished in Louisiana and beyond. Not all descendants of the
GU272 had access to their family’s history. Genealogical research is a time-consuming, involved process, and the documents containing the names of those sold are not in the Louisiana archives — they are in archives of the Maryland Society of Jesus and in Washington, D.C., many housed within the Special Collections in Georgetown University’s Lauinger Library. For the majority of descendants, there was no way to connect their families to the sale without the 1838 Bill of Sale, the manifest of the Katherine Jackson and intense genealogical research. In many parishes in Louisiana, the court system routinely failed to record the names of the enslaved, leaving many black people in the dark as to the origins of their families. Not until 2015, well after the presence of descendants was documented, did someone begin to track, locate and identify those descendants, as well as inform them about their connection to the university. Even then, it took an independent organization to initiate this work. The Georgetown Memory Project, started by Georgetown alumnus Richard Cellini (COL ’84, LAW ’87) has taken the lead in the search for descendants across the nation. Cellini founded the nonprofit in 2015 after addressing concerns about what happened to the descendants to the university and receiving an unsatisfactory response. Cellini hired Louisianabased genealogist Judy Riffel, who had done work for Baker’s cousin, Patricia BayonneJohnson, back in 2004. Since its founding in 2015, the Georgetown Memory Project has identified and located over 6,100 descendants. In the last 2½ years, the descendant community has organized, and descendants are pushing forward with ideas of what true reconciliation would look like, as well as building on newfound connections established through the research of the Georgetown Memory Project and descendants themselves.
Expanding, Connecting and Organizing
The descendants in Louisiana and beyond are no longer
waiting on university administration or the Jesuits to lead action. Three descendant organizations — the GU272 Descendants Association, the Legacy of GU 272 Alliance and the GU272 Isaac Hawkins Legacy group — have formed, in addition to many descendants who do not belong to a formal organization but have been able to keep in touch through social media and email. Descendant-led discussions include talks of financial reparations, a complex conversation to undertake 180 years later, as well as demands for memorialization efforts to educate the Georgetown community. Karran Harper Royal, the executive director of the GU272 Descendants Association, said although Georgetown has taken steps toward reconciliation, there has been an absence of descendant voices in the planning of previous university action. “Georgetown has been excellent in including us in helping to implement their vision for what should be done. They have not been excellent in executing what we have communicated is our vision of what should be done,” Harper Royal said. Given the nature of the decisions being made and the potential to directly change lives of the descendants, Harper Royal thinks the lack of transparency, communication and collaborative thought on the part of the university and the Jesuits does not reflect true reconciliation. “We can’t have other people, 180 years later, making decisions for us. It’s just not gonna fly,” Harper Royal said.
History Confronts the Present
Despite the Jesuits and Georgetown never searching for descendants of their slaves, some of the descendants have expressed appreciation for the detailed record-keeping of the university and the Jesuits. One of the working group’s recommendations that has since come into existence is the Georgetown Slavery Archive, an online source for materials relating to the Maryland Jesuits, Georgetown University and slavery. “This is an opportunity for us to put names and faces to our ancestors. It’s not just that you came from slaves, you came from slavery, but we
can actually say we came from these people,” said Brenton Mims, a descendant of Isaac Hawkins and resident of Maringouin.
Pivoting to Education
Years before the sale in 1838, Georgetown’s administration and the Maryland Jesuits were eager to do away with their plantation systems in Maryland, according to documents in the Georgetown Slavery Archive and the Jesuits’ archives. After going through a building phase in the early 1830s under Thomas Mulledy, in 1837 Georgetown found itself in need of an immediate infusion of $25,000 in cash. One report in the Georgetown Slavery Archive documents that Georgetown College had a practice of overspending, with records of $1,300 being spent on beer, brandy, liquor and champagne in 1833. Mulledy told the Jesuit superior general that it was impossible to maintain both the farms in Maryland and Georgetown College — in his eyes the College could keep itself afloat by beginning to charge tuition, and in the interim, use the profits from the sale to pay off its debt. The sale of the 272 was authorized reluctantly by Jesuit authorities in Rome in 1836, under the express conditions that families not be divided, that the Catholic faith be maintained among the slaves and that all the profits of the sale be used for endowment, not for paying off debt. All three of these terms would be violated. Despite the enormity of this sale, slaves continued to toil at Maryland plantations and on campus and would not see freedom until emancipation in 1865.
Sparking a National Conversation
In November 2015, black student activists from Georgetown were among the first to draw national attention to the university’s role in the sale of 272 slaves. The student-led protests advocated for the renaming of two campus buildings, formerly Mulledy Hall and McSherry Hall, named after the two former university presidents and administrators of the sale of the 272: Rev. Thomas Mulledy,
S.J., then leading the Maryland Jesuits, and his lawyer Rev. William McSherry, S.J. The demonstrations culminated in a sit-in in Georgetown University President John J. DeGioia’s office. The demonstrators also called for increased memorialization of the enslaved on the school’s campus and the creation of an endowment for recruiting black professors, which would amount to the present net value of the 1838 sale, about $3.3 million today. On Nov. 14, 2015, one day after student activists began their sit-in, DeGioia and the university board of directors changed the names of Mulledy and McSherry Halls to Freedom Hall and Remembrance Hall. DeGioia and the board of directors were acting on the recommendation of the Working Group on Slavery, Memory and Reconciliation, convened in September 2015 after uproar over the retention of the names Mulledy and McSherry on the newly reopened former Jesuit residence. The group was tasked with making recommendations about how to acknowledge and address the university’s history with slavery. The 15-member group published its report and recommendations in the summer of 2016. No descendants of the GU272 were included in the working group or its deliberations, and the descendants were denied access to the report before publication. Georgetown University spokesperson Meghan Dubyak said the working group was almost done with its work by the time descendants began to get in touch, and that the report was meant as a basis for future collaboration. Based off the recommendations in the working group’s report, the two campus buildings were renamed permanently — one to commemorate Anne Marie Becraft, a black woman who founded one of the first schools for black girls in Georgetown in the 19th century, and one named after Isaac Hawkins, the first name listed on the 1838 Bill of Sale between Mulledy and purchasers in Louisiana. The immediate next steps for the university have to do with the memorialization aspect of the recommendations, according to Dubyak.
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friday, August 31, 2018 “As we continue memorialization efforts at Georgetown, we will be engaging members of the descendant community to ensure their voices and perspectives are incorporated in any future plans,” Dubyak wrote in an email to The Hoya.
A Movement Begins
A piece of the university’s response to the renewed attention on the descendants was a formal apology, offered in April 2017 in conjunction with the Society of Jesus’ Maryland Province. Baker attended the liturgy, along with more than 100 descendants. DeGioia is the first university president to meet with descendants of the slaves who labored or were sold for an elite university, but the lack of descendant input in the working group and other events, as well as the slow-moving process to solidify further plans for reconciliation, remain points of tension. “When they got together in April, they told us at the last minute about it,” Baker said about the liturgy. “It wasn’t enough time for people to really gain momentum or do reasonable planning to get there.” A university spokesperson maintained that descendants were informed well in advance of the liturgy in April 2016, pointing to the descendants’ involvement in planning certain aspects of the week leading up to the liturgy, specifically the ceremony dedicating a tree outside of Isaac Hawkins Hall. During the tree dedication ceremony, descendants read the names of the 272 and spread a jar of soil from West Oak Plantation, a plantation in Iberville Parish, La. The university also began to offer legacy admission status to descendants with the first descendants starting as undergraduates in fall 2017. Other recommendations from the working group include engagement with descendants through genealogical and academic research, as well as personal meetings. DeGioia’s Chief of Staff Joe Ferrara is currently heading the descendant outreach efforts, and he said that a faculty committee has been established to move forward on the Institute for the Study of Slavery. Despite this response from the university, many members of the GU272 descendant community remain unsatisfied with the pace of dialogue
thus far and feel the university is not acting on their recommendations. “When Georgetown was responding, they did not really talk to descendants until after the fact,” Baker said. “While it was polite and kind of great that they at least publicly talked about it … what disappointed us was that it took the university too long to just listen to the descendants.” Sandra Green Thomas, the mother of Shepard Thomas (COL ’20) and Elizabeth Thomas (GRD ’20) and the former president of the GU272 Descendants Association, said she acknowledges that the university is in a difficult situation. “I understand President DeGioia is in an uncomfortable position. There are many alumni and donors who want no part of this, that think that we deserve absolutely nothing — not even the time of day,” Green Thomas said. “But as uncomfortable as his position is, I want him to think about the position my ancestors were in.”
Descendants Call for Action
Members of the grassroots descendants organizations have proposed the university and Society of Jesus involve themselves in efforts such as broadening educational opportunities in Maringouin, searching for and locating descendants of the GU272 across the country and expanding the conversation by using their resources: financial, academic and otherwise. There are many descendants who are not interested in enrolling at Georgetown who still, however, want to pursue higher education, according to descendants in Maringouin and beyond. The Legacy of the GU272 Alliance is pushing for a scholarship fund that could help descendants not only pay for Georgetown should they choose to attend, but also for education at the state school of their choosing. With the local secondary school having been shut down seven years ago due to low enrollment, some in Maringouin are calling for support in making education more accessible, as well as library resources and an adult literacy program. Woolfolk said he wants to highlight a more solid foundation for his community in Maringouin — one that he sees as talented yet resource-
deprived. “If they want to do something, come here and educate us, and throw out some money into a school system for our education,” Woolfolk said. “Let’s help the ones who can’t read or write, since the slaves couldn’t read and write. Help the ones who don’t have education. That’s the key.”
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Portraits From Louisiana
An Incomplete Search for Reconciliation
As of right now, university researchers may build on the information submitted from descendants but do not initiate the search for additional descendants, Dubyak said. “If individuals believe they may be descendants, we encourage them to provide whatever genealogical information they have to Georgetown,” she wrote in an email. Despite the determined efforts of those at the Georgetown Memory Project, the task of piecing together family ties has largely fallen to the descendants themselves. But this process, in turn, has strengthened their bond as a community. “Right now, we’re creating relationships, building relationships, forming dialogues,” Lauren Crump (GRD ’18) said. At 63 years old, Mélisande Short-Colomb (COL ’21) is one of four descendants enrolled as students at Georgetown, marking the first cohort of descendants to attend the university that sold their ancestors while knowing the controversial past. Short-Colomb said she hopes all those who have benefitted from the institution of slavery, not just the institutions at the head of the conversation, can begin some of the work of reconciliation themselves. “We have survived for centuries while Georgetown knew that there were these people out there,” Short-Colomb said. “Our strength is in who we are, not in who Georgetown is.” In reconciling with his own family’s history and the reasons why he ended up in Louisiana, Baker’s own faith and resilience have helped him understand why the descendants, not the university, should be the ones leading the conversation. “Somehow, they found a way to make meaning out of the meaningless. Instead of being bitter, they became better,” Baker said. “We are not going away. We’ve been here since 1838, and we’re going to continue.”
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cheryllyn branchE New Orleans, La.
karla leyja/the hoya karla leyja/the hoya
sandra gilbert
judy riffel
Maringouin, La.
Baton Rouge, La.
Descendant
Genealogist
“You’d be surprised with the people that I ask who are related to me and we talk and then I tell them and they never heard of it. A lot of relatives, they have just never heard of it. ... Being at the library reading, I think that’s where I first heard of it.”
Descendant, President of the 272 Descendants Association “I never thought of Catholicism or any other religious institution as not having any part in slavery. Never thought of it that way. As far as I was concerned, everybody who didn’t do something about it was complicit.”
“I didn’t have any examples in the genealogy world to base something this large on. Everybody does little projects. We look at one family, we look at maybe a community — a few people — but not 272.”
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matthew mims Maringouin, La. Descendant “The big thing with time is I think that Georgetown and the Jesuits, they are trying to control it in a manner where they want to prolong the situation that’s going on right now because if you do the math, this has been going on for about 180 years. It’s 180 years. It’s a big thing to me because I don’t want to add another year, and add another year, and add another year to this.”
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brent mims Maringouin, La. Descendant “There’s been a lot of passionate conversation about this topic, with the people I’ve been talking to. I would like to see the people of the actual town brought into it more. Maybe that is the only thing that I think the whole process is lacking — that the actual people that still live here, they may not have a clue that this is going on.”
sandra green thomas New Orleans, La. Descendant, NonOfficer Director of the GU272 Descendants Association “What is really the end of Jim Crow? What do you call the end of Jim Crow? If you’re still deprived of a decent educational system, or access, really, to economic power, then how has Jim Crow ended? ... Just because we can sit in a restaurant next to each other, doesn’t mean that Jim Crow has been totally dismantled.”
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Maringouin Grapples With Education Gap margo snipe
going to school with the African-Americans.” For Maringouin families, the closure of the town’s high school meant the loss of a community hub. Maringouin was already a small town — home to just over 1,000 residents, according to 2017 data from the U.S. Census Bureau — but its population has decreased each year. Vorise, the first black woman to serve as mayor in Maringouin, said maintaining the community very much depends upon the existence of the school. “If there is no school, in theory you don’t have a community, because the school is very important in ensuring that your community thrives and survives,” Vorise said.
Hoya Staff Writer
As young boys, Brenton and Matthew Mims spent most of their time outdoors when they were not in school. Underneath the sweltering Louisiana sun, the Mims brothers would hunt, fish and raise the family hogs. Their property’s 11 pecan trees scattered nuts across the lawn, and together the brothers would gather them — true country boys, as they describe themselves. In their town of Maringouin, La., the two boys limited bouts of boredom by exploring the outdoors, attending to academics and studying scripture. The town, located a half-hour outside Baton Rouge, is made up of a small, tightknit community of people seemingly all linked by blood. Everyone is related in Maringouin, as residents say. For many of the town’s residents, their common ancestry dates back to 1838. The year marks the sale of 272 slaves by the Society of Jesus from plantations in Maryland to four Louisiana plantations in order to save Georgetown University from financial ruin. The Mims brothers, descendants of Isaac Hawkins, whose name is listed first on the 1838 Bill of Sale, believe there is a need to bridge the divide between the higher education that Georgetown University offers and the current state of education in Maringouin, a town made up primarily of descendants of the 272, and similar towns across the United States. With limited educational resources in Maringouin and the surrounding neighborhoods, descendants of the GU272 are calling for Georgetown University and the Society of Jesus to assist in increasing opportunities for education beyond Georgetown’s current offer to descendants of legacy status in admissions.
A Disputed Shift in Schooling
Now an elementary school teacher himself, Matthew Mims reflected on his upbringing in a town where in 2009, the secondary school was shut down. “Seven minutes. We went from seven minutes to an hour,” Matthew Mims said about the time it now takes for students to get to school. The closure of North Iberville High School forced students to transfer to schools on the south end of Iberville Parish — about an hourlong commute from Maringouin. The decision to close the school due to low enrollment hinted heavily at the underlying race relations that continue to permeate the U.S. education system. For high school, Matthew Mims attended the Math, Science and Arts Academy in Plaquemine and was a member of the first graduating class from the magnet school in 2012. “It took three buses to get to school and two to get home, mainly because when the school closed, I had no choice,” Matthew Mims said. The decision to close North Iberville High School came in April 2009, with a vote by the parish school board. The days surrounding the school board’s decision were filled with protests, petitions and rallies led by local leaders and families in Maringouin, including the town’s mayor, Demi Vorise. Iberville Schools Superintendent Ed Cancienne cast the deciding vote to send the students in Maringouin to Plaquemine High. Even after the decision was made, parents and community leaders continued their fight, petitioning the school board to create a new Christian charter school in 2015. Despite the continued efforts, the proposed charter school did not gain traction, and students in the area who wish to attend middle or high school must still make the daily commute to Plaquemine.
Plantation House Turned Public School
The now-shuttered North Iberville High, burrowed in the Deep South of the United States, was once the site of Shady Grove Plantation, built by Isaac Erwin and completed in 1856.
The Fight for Equality
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Georgetown slave descendants in Maringouin, La., face an education gap fueled by racial disparities. Long after the plantation system in Louisiana dissolved, the racial dynamics of the Jim Crow era continued to seep into education. In 1918, the Iberville school system acquired Shady Grove Plantation and turned it into Shady Grove School, the traditionally all-white predecessor to North Iberville High. It served the northern region of the parish as an elementary, middle and high school. From 1918 until 1942, students attended high school inside the plantation house. The neighboring all-black school, T.A. Levy School, now Rosehill Baptist Church, was opened in March 1953. In May 1954, the Brown v. Board of Education Supreme Court ruling ordered all schools in the United States to be desegregated. The Iberville Parish school system, like other school systems in the Deep South, dragged its heels. More than a decade later, the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ordered the full desegregation of schools in Louisiana, Texas and Mississippi by July of the 1969-70 school year. In 1970, 16 years after the Brown ruling, Shady Groove School and the T.A. Levy School were fully integrated. T.A. Levy was closed in 1992, and a new wing was added to Shady Grove School named the T.A. Levy Building. Together, the schools were renamed North Iberville Elementary and High School. Frustrated by integration, many white families moved out of Maringouin or placed their children in private schools, marking the beginning of a pattern of white flight in the area. The school became predominantly black. Forty years later, in 2009, all secondary students had to transfer secondary schools when North Iberville High was shut down.
Remnants of Segregation
Brenton Mims said the decision to close the high school in 2009 was motivated in part by race, as many of the white families sent their children to private schools or schools outside the parish. “As long back I can remember, it seems like, ‘We don’t want our kids going to school with your kids’ — like black kids going to school with white kids,” Brenton Mims said. “There was actual segregation in schools near here that were created during times of desegregation.” According to a number of Louisiana residents, segregation in the state’s school system continues to this day. “I can probably name on my hand the five white friends that I went to school with from elementary until I had to leave North Iberville,” Matthew Mims said. “They did not want Caucasians
Concerns about limited resources do not end with secondary education in Maringouin. According to the Census Bureau, while 34 percent of white people in Maringouin attained a bachelor’s degree or higher in 2016, only 9 percent of black people attained the same level. While Georgetown announced in September 2016 that it would offer legacy status in admissions to descendants of the GU272, many descendants are calling for an increased emphasis on primary and secondary education, especially in Maringouin and towns located in the three other Louisiana parishes to which the enslaved were sold. Though the three formal GU272 descendants’ organizations and individual descendants vary in opinions concerning what Georgetown University, the Maryland Jesuits and the Catholic Church should offer the community, there is collective agreement that education should be a primary focus. Sandra Green Thomas, a member of the board of directors of the GU272 Descendants Association, is calling on the Jesuits to provide the youth with a solid foundation for their future by assisting with early education in Maringouin and the greater Louisiana area. Thomas is also the mother of Elizabeth Thomas (GRD ’20) and Shepard Thomas (COL ’20), two of the first GU272 descendants to attend Georgetown University. “If you catch them while they’re young, you can really make an impact with their outcomes later,” Thomas said. “Assist with giving [the Maringouin community] accommodations, because without that foundation, you’ll always be scrambling to catch up, just to keep your head above water.” Other GU272 descendants’ organizations have echoed the same sentiment. Matthew Mims, a member of the Legacy of the GU272 Alliance, believes Georgetown has the resources to provide a holistic education: one that builds skill and morale. “I would like to see Georgetown visit the areas that are out here, and the areas that are around Georgetown as well, and educate the children on what they can do to better themselves, on what they can do to push themselves forward, and let them know that they are not limited,” Matthew Mims said. In a community where 20 percent live below the poverty line compared to the 15.1 percent nationally according to census data, some descendants are confident that Georgetown and the Jesuits’ resources could have a tremendous impact. “Promote education in the town,” said Brenton Mims, who is a graduate of the Southern University Law Center. “We don’t have a school anymore, and there are a lot of older adults that need more education to just further themselves in life.” The Iberville Parish school system is not the only route to increasing educational resources, according to the Mims brothers. The brothers said a library filled with books, better desktop computers and increased hours — as many libraries in the area are only open two days a week — may help revitalize the community. GU272 Descendants Association President Cheryllyn Branche has seen the Jesuits actively provide education within their own institutions and said she believes that small communities like Maringouin can benefit from similar assistance and resources. “We know how to do education. It’s a matter of choosing to do it in areas where you can have the biggest impact. Start small and grow,” Branche said. “If you build it, people will come. People will come to support it.”
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TRACING THE 272
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THE HOYA
Human Remains Found During Construction of Arrupe lisa burgoa Hoya Staff Writer
As Georgetown University was breaking ground on the construction of its newest residence hall in December 2014, workers unearthed a fragment of the school’s hidden history: a human thighbone. The publicly undisclosed discovery of human remains has raised questions about the level of care the university took to memorialize the site and publicize the finding, as it was found in a location known to have been used as a segregated graveyard — the final resting place for several Georgetown slaves and the local Catholic community between 1818 and 1833. The crew of the Gilbane Building Company — Georgetown’s construction contractor — had already known that the discovery of human remains would be a possibility. The site of Pedro Arrupe, S.J. Hall in Georgetown’s Northeast Triangle was near the Old College Ground, a campus graveyard used by the Holy Trinity Church as a burial ground for parishioners as well as slaves and free blacks in the Georgetown neighborhood. The College Ground was long gone by the time construction on the residence hall began, having been removed in 1953 to make room for the university’s expansion near what is now the Reiss Science Building. But only a fraction of the bodies buried in the area were recovered; out of the over 900 people buried at the College Ground, only about 50 were discovered and transferred to Mount Olivet Cemetery in 1953, according to local historian Carlton Fletcher. “Cemeteries were moved — there was a big spate of doing this between the 1890s and 1950, when it was just considered fairly normal,” Fletcher said in an interview with The Hoya. “The pendulum was very much on the side of progress and indifference.” Construction continued under the supervision of the archaeological firm AECOM, although no other human remains were found at the site, according to a university spokesperson. Later, AECOM conducted an analysis on the femur, concluding that the bone belonged to a male of indeterminate ancestry between the ages of 35 and 49 and that it may have been displaced during the transfer of remains from the College Ground. Less than two years later, the $46-million, newly constructed Arrupe Hall began housing upperclassmen for the fall 2016 semester. Today, many of the students who study in the Reiss Science Building, sleep in Arrupe Hall or stroll through the brick walkways on the northeast side of campus are unaware that human bodies were once interred beneath their feet. In much of the history of Washington, D.C., the redevelopment of cemeteries was viewed as the inevitable price of growth; when a property’s expansion began to encroach on burial grounds, bodies were often exhumed and relocated elsewhere. According to D.C. city archaeologist Ruth Trocolli, this process was almost always imperfect. “When I say a cemetery is ‘moved,’ I’m putting it in air quotes,” Trocolli said in an interview with The Hoya. “Moving a cemetery, even in the recent past, in the 1950s and 1960s, is almost impossible — to clear every grave completely, find
every grave, to get all human remains out of it, to not leave any parts behind. And that is the sad and true reality.” But for those whose ancestors were enslaved by the Maryland Jesuits and sold to benefit Georgetown College, this treatment of burial sites — along with the lack of memorialization around these spaces — is a prime example of their ancestors’ contributions going unmarked and unremembered. Sandra Green Thomas, mother of two Georgetown students and a descendant of the 272 slaves sold to Louisiana in 1838 to save the financially struggling college, said the treatment of these burial sites follows the pattern of institutions sacrificing human dignity for profit. “The people in these burial sites, especially the enslaved, are viewed as people who are no longer of any use, and they can be discarded, without any thought given to their humanity,” Thomas said in an interview with The Hoya. “This whole view of people, as tools, seems to be a theme.” Mélisande Short-Colomb (COL ’21), a descendant of the GU272, noted that while the enslaved people buried at the site of the College Ground lie forgotten, the very Jesuits who organized the 1838 sale, Fr. William McSherry, S.J., and Fr. Thomas Mulledy, S.J., are buried in the Jesuit Community Cemetery at the heart of campus. “Would any aspect of the Society of Jesus and Georgetown University ever consider building over the final resting place of the Jesuits in their cemetery, where Mulledy and McSherry now lay, to build a new dorm? No, never,” ShortColomb said. “So once again, the least are sacrificed to the good of the most and the powerful men who get to decide. People who were enslaved and trafficked by the Society of Jesus and Georgetown University had and have no say over their bodies in life or death.” The burial records for Holy Trinity Church, which are documented on Georgetown’s online Slavery Archive, contain some of the names of enslaved people who were interred at the College Ground. At least two people presumed to be slaves of Georgetown are listed in the records: Rachel, who died in 1821 and is listed as a “col’d Woman of the College Wash house,” and Charles, who died in 1832, described simply as “black — servant of the college.” Other sacramental records also contain allusions to slaves being buried at the College Ground. One such record, written by a Father McElroy in 1819, describes the death of an enslaved woman thought to be 17 years old whose funeral was attended by 400 people. Fletcher’s research has identified 13 slaves listed in Holy Trinity’s death register between 1821 and 1832. The Working Group on Slavery, Memory and Reconciliation — convened by University President John J. DeGioia in September 2015 to provide recommendations on addressing the university’s past involvement with slavery — included a recommendation to “mark sites on our campus associated with the history of slavery with informative plaques.” Since those recommendations were released, the university has instituted one marker on campus at Isaac Hawkins Hall, named after an enslaved man whose name appeared first on the Articles of Agreement authorizing the 1838
sale of slaves. Members of the 15-person working group were not alerted about the discovery of the human femur on the site of the College Ground, which occurred in 2014, before they convened. However, while in session, the group was informed of the discovery of additional bones, which were determined to be animal remains. Georgetown University spokesperson Meghan Dubyak said the university is committed to engaging with the descendant community to guide its memorialization efforts. “As we continue memorialization efforts at Georgetown, we will be engaging members of the Descendant community to ensure their voices and perspectives are incorporated in any future plans,” Dubyak wrote in a statement to The Hoya. “Honoring the memory of the ancestors with a memorial on the Georgetown campus is a key step in this ongoing process.” But Richard Cellini (COL ’84, LAW ’87), founder of the Georgetown Memory Project, which works to locate descendants of Georgetown’s 1838 sale of slaves, said that the exclusion of descendants is already evident in the fact that the university failed to publicly disclose the discovery of the femur in 2014. “If there is DNA that’s comparable in that bone, that’s testable, we could compare it to existing GU272 descendants,” Cellini said in a phone interview with The Hoya. “It could easily be an ancestor of dozens or hundreds or even thousands of GU272 descendants who are alive.” Cellini also stressed that the work of institutions like Georgetown is critical in locating the remains of black slaves. However, he emphasized that this was not solely the responsibility of Georgetown or the Jesuit order; he points to the cemetery of the neighboring Georgetown Visitation Preparatory School, run by nuns in the Order of Visitation of Holy Mary, which owned approximately 100 slaves from 1800 to 1862, according to a report released last May. The death register of the Holy Trinity Church contains two references to slaves — a woman named Ruth who worked at Visitation and an
unnamed child of the monastery — who may have been buried at the College Ground. “In terms of resources and responsibilities, it’s not just one institution,” Cellini said. “It’s four institutions: Georgetown, the Jesuits, Visitation and the nuns, whose reputation is on the line here, in terms of knowing the truth about this plot of land.” History professor Marcia Chatelain, a member of the working group who has lived in Arrupe Hall as the faculty-in-residence since 2016, said she tries to be deliberate in thinking about the people once buried just yards away, particularly those tethered to the university through forced labor. “I think about it often,” Chatelain said in an interview with The Hoya. “I think about the ways that histories can be so easily erased, and I think it’s important for us to think about not only how Georgetown continues to exist in the present, but how it got there. I think this type of research allows us to be more mindful and more respectful of the fact that a lot the things we have today are a result of great losses or great pain.” Short-Colomb stressed her belief that there were no excuses for the university’s inaction in addressing the presence of burial grounds. “You could have put up a sign. You could have painted a mural. You could have planted a tree. You could have done any number of things as the administration of the university who is invested in being proactive in addressing this. Or just said, ‘You know what, we’re lost here. We don’t know what to do, because this is all very new to us and we don’t have answers, but we’re willing to talk about it,’” Short-Colomb said. Thomas said if descendants were to be consulted on the subject of burial grounds, their suggestion would be clear: to not hide the past. “If more instances like these happen, they need to make them publicly known. And, of course, there needs to be memorialization to these people,” Thomas said. “Any sort of DNA evidence that can be retrieved from these remains should be shared publicly, because there is a large descendant community that is hungry for any morsel of information about their ancestors.”
GEORGETOWN UNIVERSITY
Arrupe Hall sits near what was once the Old College Ground: a graveyard that served as the final resting place for the local Catholic community, including slaves.
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TRACING THE 272
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Uncovering Past and Present: My Trip Back Home Elizabeth Thomas MARINGOUIN, La. — Growing up in New Orleans, I always knew that my mother’s paternal family came from Maringouin, La., and had deep roots in the community there. Years before I was first able to set foot in Maringouin, I developed a deep knowledge of my family’s ties to the area from family reunions and folklore. My grandfather, Shepard Green, would talk about his childhood in Maringouin and his decision to eventually leave the town to get an education in New Orleans, over 100 miles away. My mother would talk about her summer vacations, reuniting with her cousins and older family members on the family property that was passed down through generations. I was fortunate to grow up with a family that loved to talk about our history, and from these stories, I gathered that my family was as integral to Maringouin’s history as Maringouin was to my family’s history. I already knew my great-great-grandfather, William Harris, who was born a slave in 1850, had donated part of his land to the Catholic Church in 1897 — land that provided grounds for a new church and the first school for black people in town. For years, these stories were all I knew of my family’s connection to Maringouin. But in April 2016, Rachel Swarns wrote an article for The New York Times titled “272 Slaves Were Sold to Save Georgetown. What Does It Owe Their Descendants?” My mother, an avid reader of The New York Times, noticed the graveyard featured on the cover story was that of the Immaculate Heart of Mary, the church built in Maringouin after William Harris donated his land. My mother wondered how and why Maringouin ended up on the cover of The New York Times. After doing her own research, she discovered our ancestors Sam and Betsy Harris, the parents of William Harris, were two of the people enslaved and sold by the Society of Jesus to save Georgetown University from financial ruin. The names Sam and Betsy Harris were familiar to me and to my family. We always knew who Sam and Betsy Harris were, as they were the parents of William Harris, who had given so much back to the Maringouin community. We prided ourselves on being able to trace our family history back that far. However, despite all that we knew, we had no idea that we had ties to Georgetown or even that the university was connected to Maringouin. This detail is what made this story so peculiar for me: As a family that loved talking about our history, how could we have no knowledge about this chapter of our story? This discovery, prompted by the article in The New York Times, brought me to Maringouin for
the first time. It was a year after Swarns’ story came out, and I went to do an interview with NPR host Noel King and my mother. That first trip, I walked around in a sort of daze. It was a lot to take in — coming to the place that I heard so many stories about, having this brand-new perspective on my family history and finally being able to walk through the town of my ancestors. Most of my time on that first trip was spent processing my emotions and trying to put myself in the shoes of those who came before me. It was not until last month on my second trip back to Maringouin, with my brother Shepard and a team of journalists from The Hoya, that I was able to really take a hard look at this community, my community. We started our trip to Maringouin on a Sunday morning, with 9 a.m. Mass at the Immaculate Heart of Mary. I was initially nervous, especially about inserting myself into a community that I felt was mine but knew nothing about. As soon as we walked in, the first thing I noticed was the obvious racial separation among the people in the pews: The majority of black people were sitting on the left side of the church, while the majority of white people were sitting on the right. My grandfather and mother often spoke of the racial tension between blacks and whites in Maringouin, but this was my first time seeing it with my own eyes. Racial division and tension were not something we were imagining: They are a daily reality for the people living in this area, according to Maringouin Mayor Demi Vorise, the first female black mayor in the town’s history. “The issue of race here is so tense, you would think we’re still living in the Jim Crow South, or you would think we are still in slavery,” Vorise said in an interview with The Hoya’s team. “To walk into a building of the Lord, and you see whites on the right and blacks on the left — that’s a problem. I could say it over and over, loud on top of the building, because I am adamant about that; it’s an issue.” I soon observed how central Catholicism was to the resilience of the community, a connection that had remained equally strong in my own family, even after moving away from Maringouin. The service was a special baccalaureate Mass to honor high school graduates in the community. Following the service, my brother and I took the opportunity to introduce ourselves to some of the residents over cake, hoping that someone would be connected to our family. There is a long-running joke in Maringouin that everyone in town is related, so we were not at all surprised to find people who immediately knew our family or had some sort of relationship with the Greens or the Harrises. We even ran into a cousin whom I had never heard of before. I spoke to many people who identified as lifelong Catholics and were descended from the 272 enslaved people sold by the Society of Jesus. I heard about how some of their families had always been Catholic but still had no idea where that Catholicism had originally come from. This same narrative applies to me and my family. I grew up going to Mass, and I even graduated from a Catholic high school. My grandparents were Catholic and regulars at
KARLA LEYJA/THE HOYA
Upon returning to Maringouin, La., the hometown of her mother’s paternal family, Elizabeth Thomas uncovered details about her family’s past and its links to Georgetown University. their church. I was told that we were Catholic because we always had been Catholic. Little did I know that Catholicism was most likely introduced to my ancestors during their enslavement, before they were sacrificed for the existence of one of the most prominent institutions of higher education in this country. Once we left the Immaculate Heart of Mary, we travelled to the segregated graveyard where my ancestors are buried. As I walked the grounds, the secrets buried beneath the grass and dirt consumed my thoughts. I walked past the row of my ancestors wondering what they had known about their existence in Maringouin. How could the knowledge of how Georgetown altered our family’s trajectory never have been passed down through the generations still wrestling with the consequences of the sale? Were they ashamed of their past? Was it too traumatic to even speak about, so they buried their history as a coping mechanism? The answers to these questions I will never know. For most of my life, I did not even know that my family’s history stretched past Maringouin, north toward Maryland, Washington, D.C., and Georgetown. For 23 years, I believed that I knew my family’s history, only to find out that I only had a piece of the story. I could not help but wonder: Why were these secrets kept hidden for so long? Why did the gatekeepers of my family’s history, and so many others in the community of Maringouin, work so hard to bury these truths? These questions continued to weigh on my mind when our group stumbled upon my family’s property after being lost for 30 minutes. The first trip back home I took, the time I came last year with my mother, we drove past the acres of land owned originally by William Harris, but I stayed in the car. This time, something compelled me to get out the car and explore the property with my brother and the group. These moments on our family’s land were the most gratifying part of my trip back to Maringouin. Growing up, I heard fantastic stories about summers and family reunions on that very
land, about my mom travelling up to Maringouin with her cousins. I heard about how huge the property was, about the many restless days and nights on the land and mostly about all the fun my mom had with her siblings and cousins. Those experiences were something my siblings and I always felt like we missed out on. On this second trip back home, I got a tiny glimpse into what those summers might have been like for my family. It truly was incredible, seeing those acres upon acres of land and imagining my wild and loud family having a blast in the Louisiana heat. It dawned on me that the enormous amount of land that William Harris was able to buy and that our family was able to maintain until this day was acquired by the son of those that were enslaved and sold across the country, Sam and Betsy Harris. How was it that the son of those sold into a life of unimaginable misery in the Deep South, years before emancipation, was able to acquire this amount of land? Why did he feel the need to plant his roots in this community? It was, and still is, incredible to think about the resilience of my ancestors, the other 272 enslaved people and their descendants. I have come to realize that this is a town filled with history, filled with secrets and filled with the unknown. It is a town just discovering its history, and thus, a people just discovering themselves. It is a place with such a strong Catholic foundation, and it is a place that to this day struggles with racism and segregation. I cannot help but believe that this can be attributed to Georgetown University, the Society of Jesus and its decision to sell 272 enslaved people to plantations in Louisiana. I only wish the leaders of these institutions would realize the impact they had and continue to have on Maringouin and do real work to improve the lives of those still living there, 180 years later.
Elizabeth Thomas is a graduate student pursuing a master of professional studies in journalism at Georgetown University and a descendant of the GU272.
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Legacy Is Everything, But Legacy Status Is Not Enough Shepard Thomas
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hroughout my life, I have been fortunate to have a family who was able to invest in my education. This education wasn’t forced upon me; I used this support from my family to further my academic career. After learning in 2016 that I am a descendant of the 272 slaves sold down to Louisiana in 1838 to save Georgetown University from bankruptcy, I applied to the university and was admitted as a transfer student. One of the few concrete actions Georgetown has taken to address its legacy of slavery is to offer descendants legacy status in admissions, a decision announced Sept. 1, 2016, after a recommendation from the Working Group on Slavery, Memory and Reconciliation. I’ve come to realize that the help I received, which ultimately led me to enroll in Georgetown, is not the same support other descendants need. The origins of my education, which for most of my life took place in New Orleans, can be traced back to my greatgrandparents. In the late 1920s, Milton and Julia Green decided to send their children over 100 miles away to the city of New Orleans, with the goal of them receiving a quality education and economic opportunity, options not available to them in Maringouin, La. The publicity surrounding the revelation of Georgetown’s history with my family has not only led me to enroll at this university but also to travel for the first time to the town my family once called home. A large number of descendants are still located in and around Maringouin, a town of about 1,000 residents. In May, I went to Maringouin for the first time, with my sister and student journalists from The Hoya. Heading into the trip, I anticipated meeting some of my relatives for the first time and gaining an understanding of where my family came from. This weeklong trip felt like travelling into the past. It became evident to me that there was not much of a future being provided to the people of Maringouin. As of today, there are no secondary schools in the town. To attend high school, teens in Maringouin must make a 58-mile round-trip commute to Plaquemine High School, which is located on the south end of Iberville Parish. In Maringouin, only 14 percent of residents have attained a bachelor’s degree or higher, and the average household income is $36,518, well below the national average median income, which hit a record high of $59,039 in 2016. In a town lacking a proper educational system and economic opportunity, Georgetown’s policy providing legacy status in admissions for descendants in Maringouin lies at the end of a path
littered with large, seemingly insurmountable hurdles. During my encounters with different people in Maringouin, it became clear that Georgetown’s legacy status has yet to be properly announced to this small town. In fact, many people had little to no knowledge of Georgetown’s involvement in their ancestry. I expected to have amazing conversations with residents who were descendants about our shared connection to Georgetown during this week in Maringouin. After meeting many uninformed descendants, I realized it is unrealistic for many residents to be aware of the things that Georgetown has been saying and doing, as that news has mainly been announced in national news publications. Ultimately, Georgetown cannot expect information in The Washington Post and The New York Times to reach this town, especially considering some residents do not know they are descendants. As I went through the town searching for people to talk to, I ended up being more informative than I expected. Confused and frustrated, I hoped to eventually speak to some people who were familiar with Maringouin’s connection to Georgetown. One afternoon, while I was at the gas station in town, I happened to run into somebody who would provide one of the most important conversations I had on my trip. His name was Bertrand Woolfolk. Woolfolk asked my colleagues and I what we were doing in Maringouin, to which I replied I was a descendant of the GU272. After hearing this, Woolfolk said that he happened to be a descendant as well.
I’ve come to realize that the help I received, which ultimately led me to enroll in Georgetown, is not the same support other descendants need. Once I told him who my grandfather was, I could immediately see a glimmer in his eyes. Not only did Woolfolk know my grandfather, but he told me that we were related. Woolfolk was kind enough to drive us to his grandmother’s property, which is located just east of my family’s property in Maringouin. In fact, all the land along that stretch of Bayou Road is still owned by the descendants of our common ancestor, William Harris, the son of two of the people enslaved then sold to save
Georgetown. We interviewed Woolfolk in the back of his grandmother Edith “Nook” Woolfolk’s home, the same place he said she would sit with my grandfather — her first cousin — and talk many years ago. Woolfolk has lived in Maringouin and worked in construction his entire life. At 53, he only has one more year until he reaches retirement. As a child, he spent many days at the home of his grandmother, who worked in the sugar cane fields in her years of youth, while her husband Ernest Woolfolk drove a bus.
If the students of Maringouin had the early education opportunities they deserve, many more of them would be attending Georgetown with me. During our interview, Woolfolk recalled some of his grandmother’s beliefs that still stick with him today, despite her having died some years earlier. He told me that whenever a breeze would blow from the bayou and hit her house, she would say that they were receiving a blessing. Though she told many stories while sitting on her front porch, Edith Woolfolk did not speak much about where her parents and ancestors had come from. Only in recent years and with the genealogical work of his sister has Woolfolk been able to discover his connection to Georgetown University. Nearing the end of our interview, I asked him what he believed Georgetown and the Jesuits owed the people of Maringouin. He replied, “Nothing.” Woolfolk was one of the few people I had encountered in Maringouin who had some knowledge of Georgetown’s involvement in the community’s past, and this statement left me dumbfounded. We ended up talking back and forth, and he eventually asked me what I thought Georgetown should do to help Maringouin. I pointed out that Georgetown is an institution of learning that our ancestors helped build, but many Maringouin residents, a large portion of whom are descendants, have not had the benefit of higher education. In fact, very few people in Maringouin have had easy access to a secondary education. Woolfolk replied that he felt a breeze coming from the bayou, which led him to agree with me. Yet he still questioned what practical support Georgetown could deliver to the people of Maringouin. As Maringouin’s population shrinks every year with more and more young families moving away, Bertrand wondered what Georgetown could do to
help the next generation of Maringouin residents succeed. I believe Georgetown should provide the people of Maringouin more accessible assistance. It is a slap in the face to the descendants for the administration to only offer them legacy status in admissions. The people of Maringouin have so many educational and financial obstacles to surmount before they can even consider going to college. Even a local secondary school would be more beneficial to descendants in this area than legacy status. Without the educational aspirations of our great-grandparents, my sister and I would not be students at Georgetown, making up half of the descendants currently enrolled in the university. If I were not a student at Georgetown, I would not have had the opportunity to write about my family’s involvement with the school in The Hoya. Though my great-grandparents were fortunate enough to help their children receive a better education outside of Maringouin, it cannot be assumed that all the descendants had the same opportunity. If the students of Maringouin had the early education opportunities they deserve, many more of them would be attending Georgetown with me. Georgetown still prides itself on the history of the early Jesuits, who “sought through their schools to educate the whole person — mind, body, and spirit. Georgetown focuses not only on conveying information and intellectual content, but also on building a home for wisdom, where all dimensions of students’ lives will be enriched.” This mission, visible on the university website, has informed education at Georgetown for generations. If this is the case, there should not be so many descendants in Maringouin benighted to the university’s involvement in their town. What is the purpose of offering legacy status to people who are unaware it is an option? Going beyond just the future for the youth in Maringouin, what benefits can Georgetown offer descendants who are non-school-aged, uninterested in attending the university or unable to be accepted even with legacy status they receive? One hundred and eighty years since the sale of their ancestors, what can the descendants in Maringouin and beyond receive for the betterment of their lives? I’m not here to say I have the answer, but I know legacy status is not sufficient. The most important detail Georgetown should be focusing on is restoring the community of descendants, not offering them a far-from-guaranteed opportunity to attend school on the Hilltop.
Shepard Thomas (COL ’20) is a descendant of the GU272 and a student at Georgetown. Shepard and his sister, Elizabeth Thomas (GRD ’20), joined members of The Hoya on an investigative reporting trip in Louisiana.
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TRACING THE 272
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On Campus, Names Carry the Weight of History Lisa burgoa Hoya Staff Writer
Throughout his life, Br. Joseph Mobberly, S.J., wrestled with the same questions about Jesuit slaveholding that bedeviled the Society of Jesus in the early 19th century: questions focused on the economic aspects of slaveholding, not the moral issues at stake. He questioned the profitability of Jesuit plantations in Maryland and favored replacing slavery with free labor, but only as a practical economic consideration. At the same time, he used teachings from his Catholic faith as justification for holding humans in bondage and oversaw the brutal treatment of slaves as farm manager at the Jesuit-run St. Inigoes Manor plantation in St. Mary’s County, Md. Today, nearly 200 years after his death in 1827, Mobberly’s name is enshrined on the facade of White-Gravenor Hall, engraved on a stone shield and flanked by flowers. His is just one of the many names across campus that hark back to the university’s inextricable link to slavery. Mobberly received his education at the university and returned to teach after serving as the overseer at one of the Jesuit plantations in Maryland. In April 2017, Georgetown University rededicated Freedom and Remembrance Halls, buildings previously named after two former college presidents who orchestrated a sale of 272 slaves to Louisiana in 1838. But the presence of other names across campus, including Mobberly, draw attention to the fact that structures continue to honor the legacy of many whose contributions to Georgetown are marred by ties to slavery. Lauren Crump (GRD ’18), a descendant of Isaac Hawkins, one of the slaves sold in 1838, said she is troubled that Mobberly’s name is celebrated in stone at the site of a building that, among other functions, houses the university’s Office of Admissions. “Any site on the side of a building is a mark of distinction and respect,” Crump said in a phone interview with The Hoya. “I don’t think anyone that represents that level of oppression should be acknowledged that way.” The exterior of White-Gravenor Hall is so rife with Catholic and Jesuit symbolism that, along with Copley Hall, it has been described as a “sermon in stone.” In fact, Fr. W. Coleman Nevils, who was president of Georgetown University when the building was completed in 1933, wrote in his 1934 book “Miniatures of Georgetown” that White-Gravenor contains “no decorative stone which has not some historical significance.” Nevils writes that Mobberly’s name is included on White-Gravenor Hall because he “did much for Georgetown” as a teacher — he studied at Georgetown College in the late 18th century and returned to campus in 1805 after entering the Society of Jesus to teach English, Latin and Greek. But Nevils makes no mention of his involvement in the Jesuits’ slaveholding history, much of which is chronicled in Mobberly’s own writings. In the 1820s, even as others increasingly questioned the morality of slavery, Mobberly rationalized the enterprise as compatible with a life of piety. In a 1823 diary entry available on Georgetown’s Slavery Archive, Mobberly cites Catholic
teachings to support his conclusion that “Slavery is according to Reason.” “All cannot command — All cannot obey. Some must command and others must obey,” Mobberly wrote in 1823. “We cannot reasonably suppose that God has his agents in the Celestial hierarchy and that he never intended to have any on earth.” Much of Mobberly’s justifications for slavery rely on racist notions about the inferiority of people of African descent, including the belief that they were cannibalistic descendants of the biblical tribe of Ham. In addition to equating abolition with heresy, in one of his writings Mobberly briefly ponders the morality of slaveholding. “Can a man serve God faithfully and possess slaves? Yes,” Mobberly wrote. He went on to claim that “slavery is not only lawful, reasonable and good, but necessary.” Though he urged Georgetown University President Giovanni Grassi, S.J., in an 1815 letter to stop the use of slaves at Jesuit plantations, his plea came not from moral qualms but an extensive calculus that found a cost advantage to hiring free white workers over slaves. The conditions for slaves at St. Inigoes Manor were so brutal that Mobberly was dismissed as manager after many lodged complaints against him. In his diary, he recorded an incident that occurred decades earlier at St. Inigoes mission, where an enslaved woman named Suckey was whipped as a child for intervening in the selfflagellation of a priest. Henry Callander (COL ’18) grew interested in the history and legacy of Mobberly while creating a video for his “Social Justice Documentary” class in the spring 2017 semester. At a time when the university was rededicating the buildings once named Mulledy and McSherry Hall and hosting descendants of the GU272 for an official apology at a Liturgy of Remembrance, Contrition and Hope, Callander said he found the presence of Mobberly’s name to be emblematic of conversations on how the university should address the legacy of slavery on its campus. “It was interesting that Br. Mobberly has his name recognized at the school still, because we were talking about changing the names of all these different buildings on campus,” Callander said in an interview with The Hoya. “We wanted to see what people even understand about these things that exist in Georgetown’s history.” The Working Group on Slavery, Memory and Reconciliation, convened by University President John J. DeGioia in May 2015, identified several names in its concluding 2016 report that were used for university sites and programs that contained associations to slaveholding: John Carroll, Eleanor Darnall, Patrick Francis Healy and James Ryder, whose intersections with slavery ranged from owning slaves to speaking out against abolition. Though the working group recommended renaming the former sites of Mulledy and McSherry Halls to Isaac Hawkins and Anne Marie Becraft Halls, respectively, it did not call for the renaming of other structures. One of the working group’s recommendations included marking sites on campus associated with the history of slavery with informative plaques. History professor Adam Rothman, a member of the working group, said that understanding
that many figures associated with Georgetown’s early history were embroiled with slavery helps dispel an inaccurate picture of the university’s past. Rothman points to William Gaston, credited as Georgetown’s first student and the namesake of the Gaston Hall auditorium in Healy Hall, as an example of someone with a complex relationship with slavery. Gaston belonged to a slaveholding family, but as a member of the North Carolina Supreme Court, he was a progressive figure in the history of slavery jurisprudence, asserting that slaves had the right to defend themselves against unjust attacks from their masters and deciding that free blacks were protected by state constitution and state law. “Those people who are associated with Georgetown’s early history were part of a slave society,” Rothman said in an interview with The Hoya. “It affected their thought, it affected their conduct, it affected the way the school was organized. And it’s part of our history.” Rothman added that when it comes to historical connections to slavery, the more informed the community is the better. “Every old school like Georgetown carried this history very carefully. They construct a rosy picture of the past, but that proves false. That’s not true, because it’s not complete. I think understanding the complete story would provide us with a richer and more interesting history to wrestle with,” Rothman said. University spokesperson Rachel Pugh said the process of memorialization is ongoing. “Another part of this process will be recognizing sites on our campus associated with the history of slavery, and we expect the Br. Mobberly engraving would be among other sites considered as part of this process.” Richard Cellini (COL ’84, LAW ’87), founder of the Georgetown Memory Project that works to locate the descendants of Georgetown’s 1838 sale of slaves, said ultimately the legacy
of individuals honored at Georgetown must be weighed against their historic involvement with slavery. He contrasts the legacy of Mobberly with that of Thomas Jefferson, who espoused the virtues of American democracy all the while owning over a hundred slaves. “The thing about Mobberly is that it’s not like Mobberly has a countervailing set of virtues,” Cellini said in an interview with The Hoya. “It’s not like he wrote the Declaration of Independence, authorized the Louisiana Purchase and served as our third president. Mobberly essentially did nothing, as far as I could tell, except buy and sell slaves. And to me, I look at it and think, ‘What on earth is Mobberly’s name doing up there?’ It’s bizarre.” Crump said it’s ultimately the decision of the Georgetown community — administration, students, alumni and descendants alike — to decide whether an individual honored on campus reflects the university’s values. For her part, she believes Mobberly’s name on the side of White-Gravenor should be removed or relegated to a museum and that in its place should be a placard that contextualizes its history. “To acknowledge one part of a person’s self without the other is skewed,” Crump said. “Along those same lines, if the dark part of you overshadows what your name represents to a particular institution, it’s important that you don’t get that honor of being named for that.” Crump said confronting the presence of these names is an important part of the university’s acknowledgement of its history. “I keep saying collective, because it’s not just a part of my history, as an African-American or as a slave descendant,” Crump said. “It’s all of ours, and I would like to see that dealt with the closeness that you would treat your own ancestry and your own lineage, knowing that this is your legacy.”
KARLA LEYJA/THE HOYA
The name of Br. Joseph Mobberly, S.J., who oversaw slaves at a Maryland plantation and later taught at Georgetown, sits above the entrance to White-Gravenor Hall.
friday, August 31, 2018
TRACING THE 272
THE HOYA
Descendants Demand More Reparative Action Eliza Phillips Hoya Staff Writer
Following the revelation that the Maryland Society of Jesus sold 272 enslaved people in 1838 to keep Georgetown University afloat, both the student body and descendants of the GU272 made demands for reparations. So far, the university has responded by offering legacy status to descendants, but out of the thousands of them living today, only five have enrolled in either the university’s undergraduate or master’s programs. Karran Harper Royal, the executive director of the GU272 Descendants Association, one of the three formal descendant organizations, believes these numbers reflect how offering legacy status fails to cater to the educational needs of many descendants. Harper Royal advocates for the university to recognize that descendants have different educational aspirations, which may not include attending Georgetown, and many descendants agree. Harper Royal offered her 22-year-old son with Asperger’s Syndrome, who has yet to graduate from junior college, as an example. “He’s a descendant of Isaac Hawkins. My son needs help. My son is brilliant. My son is a descendant. It would be great if we could have applied to our foundation to get him an academic coach,” Harper Royal said. Others believe that in addition to educational opportunities, the Jesuits must also reignite efforts to reunite descendants whose ancestors were separated by bondage.
Recognizing Racial Legacies
Harper Royal suggests that Georgetown implement a personalized approach, whereby descendants can independently determine which educational paths they will take with financial and academic support from Georgetown and the Jesuits. Harper Royal said this would be a step toward remedying the generational impact that the 1838 sale had on descendants’ social, economic and educational progress. “It has to be an individualized process, where descendants can be self-determining what they need,” Harper Royal said. Similarly, Lee Baker, a descendant of Nace and Bibey Butler, two of the 272 slaves sold, said he does not think that legacy status sufficiently supports educational development for the descendants. He said he believes the Jesuits have a responsibility to invest in the education of descendants from as early on as elementary school to ensure that descendants are equipped with the academic skills to apply to and thrive at universities like Georgetown. Sandra Thomas, former president of the GU272 Descendants Association and mother to two of the descendants who have enrolled in Georgetown, shared
these sentiments. “If you catch them while they’re young, and I mean even 2 years old ... you can really make an impact with their outcomes later,” she said. “Without that foundation, you’ll always be scrambling to catch up.” She suggested that Georgetown students tutor young children on a rotational basis through intensive educational programs in areas with a high concentration of descendants, such as Maringouin, La.
“We have to have a proportionate moral response to the sale of our ancestors.” KARRAn harper royal Executive Director of the GU272 Descendants Association
One of the main goals of the GU272 Descendants Association is to attain a billion-dollar fund not only to further the educational development of descendants, but also to give grants to groups working toward alleviating racial tensions and encouraging healing from the legacy of slavery. Such healing is not only necessary for those who are descendants of slaves, Harper Royal said, but also for the descendants of those who benefited from slavery and participated in the business of buying, selling or working humans as property. Harper Royal said she believes that the institution of slavery had brutalizing effects on the entire country and that all Americans, regardless of their race or background, would benefit from the foundation and its reparative work. “Slavery was a sin against humanity. Selling people was a sin against humanity,” Harper Royal said. “Owning people, selling people, treating people in such brutal ways damaged humanity in this country. That harm must be repaired.” As a lifelong Roman Catholic, Baker asserted that the Jesuits have a responsibility to acknowledge how racism and remnants of slavery continue to affect black Americans today. He encouraged the Catholic Church and the Society of Jesus to educate students in their schools on slavery, its aftermath and the church’s complicity in it, steps he has not seen from the Jesuits or Georgetown. “We kind of filter a lot of the ugliness that has happened,” Baker said. “We have been complicit in a society where it’s been racist, sexist and all of that. Catholicism and religion have been a part of it too. We need to own it in a way, in a holy way, and talk about it.” Mélisande Short-Colomb (COL ’21), a descendant of Abraham Mahoney and Mary Ellen Queen, two of the 272 people sold in 1838, has expressed similar dissatisfaction with the way slavery and its generational impacts are addressed.
“We have mythologized who we are as a nation, as a people, and that is to the detriment of all Americans,” she said. For Short-Colomb, this highlights an inexcusable level of hypocrisy among not only the Jesuits, but U.S. citizens too. “We want to go out and spread democracy across the world, and truth and freedom and the American way, while we are drowning in bigotry, disenfranchisement, racism and sexism in America,” Short-Colomb said.
Reuniting Separated Families Family separations are a devastating effect of slavery that are often overlooked, according to Harper Royal. Over 150 years after the Emancipation Proclamation, which freed over 3.5 million enslaved people in states across the South, many black Americans have thousands of relatives across the country of whom they are unaware because of the forced separation that took place during slavery. For Harper Royal, reunification is an opportunity to reconnect what slavery tore apart. As the executive director of the GU272 Descendants Association, she dedicates much of her time to finding and reuniting the families and descendants of the 272 enslaved people sold in 1838 and said she feels privileged that she is able to do this on behalf of her ancestors.
“This is the greatest revenge to slavery, reconnecting our families.” KARRAn harper royal Executive Director of the GU272 Descendants Association
“We honor these ancestors every single day as we reunite our cousins,” Harper Royal said. “I wish there was more than 24 hours to the day. This is the greatest revenge to slavery, reconnecting our families. It is so healing to put together what slavery tore apart.” However, many of the descendants including Harper Royal have expressed dissatisfaction with the little effort the Jesuits and Georgetown have made in helping with this process of reunification. Based off of the recommendations in the Georgetown University Working Group on Slavery, Memory and Reconciliation report, the two campus buildings were renamed permanently — one to commemorate Anne Marie Becraft, a black woman who founded one of the first schools for black girls in Georgetown in the 19th century, and one named after Isaac Hawkins, the first name listed on the 1838 Bill of Sale between Rev. Thomas Mulledy, S.J., and purchasers in Louisiana. Additionally, the university has publicized historical documents and research through the Georgetown Slavery Archives. Matthew Mims, a member of the Legacy of GU272 Alliance, has suggested that the Society of Jesus must develop a centralized way of searching for descendants to reduce the du-
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plicate efforts made by separate descendant groups such as the GU272 Descendants Association, the Legacy of GU272 Alliance and the Isaac Hawkins Legacy group. That work has fallen to the Georgetown Memory Project, which aims to identify the 272 slaves and locate their living descendants. Though the project was started by Georgetown alumnus, Richard Cellini (COL ‘84, LAW ‘87), it remains independent of the university itself. As of Aug. 1, 2018, it has located and connected 6,835 direct descendants of the GU272 across the country, many of whom have now unified to form the descendant groups mentioned.
Recieving Descendant Input
Though there are varying ideas throughout the descendant community on what reparative steps the Society of Jesus and Georgetown should take, there is a general consensus that descendants deserve a say in these decisions. Such sentiments were only heightened when the working group released a set of recommendations Sept. 1, 2016, without the involvement or approval of any descendants. Some of the recommendations made were that Georgetown issue an apology for its participation in slavery and publicly memorialize the enslaved persons on campus. Earlier this month, The Hoya reported that the university did not disclose to either descendants or the working group that human remains had been unearthed in 2014 during the construction of Arrupe Hall, built on the former location of a segregated graveyard used for the local Catholic community. For many descendants such as Harper Royal, reconciliation cannot be attained without the input of the descendant community. “From the descendant perspective, what’s going on at Georgetown is a university process. It’s not a descendant process,” Harper Royal said. “We have to have a proportionate moral response to the sale of our ancestors.” Joseph Ferrara, chief of staff for Georgetown University President John J. DeGioia, is leading descendant outreach efforts. He maintained that the university is committed to soliciting descendant input and deepening connections with descendants nationwide. “A key focus in recent months has been many discussions with Descendants to determine how we might establish a joint and collaborative framework for partnership and dialogue. This work is very important and is being it must be pursued with great care and sensitivity,” Ferrara wrote in an email to The Hoya. Sept. 1 will mark two years since the working group released its recommendations, and many descendants still do not feel listened to by the university. On campus, the only reference to the university’s ties to slavery is the name of Isaac Hawkins Hall, a reference to the first enslaved person recorded in the 1838 sale of the 272 slaves that saved Georgetown. “The university, the administration, has never said or done anything publicly beyond the recommendations of the working group, having the name changes of the buildings, the little event that they had in April of 2016 — it’s going to be April of 2019 and nothing more has gone on with that. They planted a tree,” Short-Colomb said.
Illustration BY: KARLA LEYJA/THE HOYA Illustration BY: Janis park AND emily shambaugh/THE HOYA