The new measures come as a result of recommendations of a committee DeGioia convened a year ago to study and address the university’s ties to slavery. The university said it will seek out the descendants of other slaves whose labor the university benefited from, as well, and also offer them preferential treatment in admissions.
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John Degioia, president of Georgetown University, is expected to make a public apology planned for Thursday. Watch live at 4 p.m.
“This report helps us get to our next phase and our next series of initiatives and outreach to think about how this history animates our future”, says associate history professor Marcia Chatelain. An unknown number of slaves worked directly in or for the school, according to NPR.
It took nearly two centuries but Georgetown University in Washington, D.C, an institution built by slaves and one that owes its success to being financed by slave labor, is finally taking steps to do penance for its past.
In addition to that, the university is already set to rename two building that had been after the two priests who participated in slave trade.
Indeed, it was in 1838 that the sale of 272 slaves by the university salvaged its crumbling budget and helped it stay afloat.
The report acknowledged that multiple elite colleges, such as Brown University and Harvard University, have publicly acknowledged their ugly history of engaging in slave trade, but that Georgetown’s 1838 slave trade orchestrated by Jesuits “stands out for its sheer size”. The committee, however, stopped short of calling on the university to provide such financial assistance, as well as admissions preference.
Georgetown University has made a decision to create a new institute to study slavery and will rename two of its buildings as it develops ways to address its past connections to the slave trade.
In past efforts to address ties to slavery, educational institutions have conducted studies and taken other steps to inform and educate about their involvement with the practice. The slaves were sent from Maryland to plantations in Louisiana.
The school will rename its Freedom Hall for Isaac, one of the sold slaves, and Remembrance Hall for Anne Marie Becraft, a black woman who created a school for African-American girls in the 1820s. Jesuit Priests aided in the sale of these slaves and more on behalf of the University.
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“We remain hopeful that we can forge a relationship with Georgetown that will lead to “real” atonement”, she said in an email. The buildings previously had been named for presidents who oversaw the 1838 mass sale.
