Georgetown to give slave descendants priority for admission

President of the Washington DC-based school John J. DeGioia will deliver the apology on Thursday afternoon – and announce a number of initiatives created to start making right on the wrongs of the past. The retired science teacher discovered that some of her ancestors were sold by the Jesuits of the Maryland Province in 1838, to pay off Georgetown University’s massive debt.

He says Georgetown will need to identify and reach out to descendants of slaves and recruit them to the university.

For example, the university plans to establish an institute dedicated to the study of slavery, launch an admissions program which will award preferential status to descendants of slaves, and erect a monument in memory of the slaves who worked, were bought and then sold for the benefit of Georgetown. Then-presidents Rev. Thomas Mulledy and Rev. William McSherry made a decision to sell 272 slaves for the modern day equivalent of $3.3 million. Georgetown was supported by the plantations of Jesuit priests in Maryland; hundreds of people were enslaved by those Jesuits. The university did not mention scholarships or financial aid for descendants of the enslaved.

In a letter to the university community in April 2016, DeGioia outlined archival research to search for decedents of slaves as a primary focus over the a year ago. The university had already committed to renaming two buildings that had been named for the priests who orchestrated the sale.

“I hope the work of the Working Group teaches people that nothing bad happens when we’re honest about the past”, Georgetown history professor Marcia Chatelain said in their announcement.

In addition to the apology, the report outlined several other steps.

Georgetown University has announced that descendants of 272 slaves, from whose sale the school profited in 1838, will receive “an advantage in the admissions process” as part of a larger effort to address the school’s early ties to slavery.

Richard Cellini, the founder of that project, told the student newspaper at Georgetown, that statistical models suggest up to 12,000 to 15,000 descendants may be living.

The president of Georgetown, John Degioia, will also offer a public apology to the enslaved and their descendants in a speech planned for Thursday.