Georgetown is one of several US universities struggling to acknowledge and make amends for their past ties to slavery.
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He did, however, declare that “we must acknowledge that Georgetown participated in the institution of slavery”, adding, “we can not do our best work if we can not take ownership”.
In 1838, Georgetown University sold 272 slaves to pay off some of the school’s debt.
The transaction was one of the most thoroughly documented large sales of enslaved people in history, and the names of numerous people sold are included in bills of sale, a transport manifest and other documents.
In that report, the working group recommends that DeGioia issue a formal, public apology for his predecessors’ actions as well as establish “an advantage in the admissions process” for the descendants of their slaves. “They’re calling us family”.
“We provide care and respect for the members of the Georgetown community: faculty, staff, alumni, those with an enduring relationship with Georgetown”.
The college also plans to enact more measures aimed at apologizing for their past involvement with slavery.
But those are first steps only; as the university acknowledges, more will be needed.
On many campuses, those darker histories remained mostly hidden for decades.
In 2006, for example, Brown University published a report chronicling its ties to the slave trade and in 2014 installed a memorial on campus to recognize it. Harvard posted a plaque on campus this year honoring slaves who worked on campus in the 1700s.
Georgetown also plans to “invest” in diversity, paying special attention to improving the “racial climate” on the campus through “racial and ethnic climate” surveys and sensitivity training.
“It has to go much farther”, she said, suggesting the school’s endowment should be used to provide scholarships to the descendants. (In November 2015, the school announced it would give the buildings interim names: Freedom Hall and Remembrance Hall.) Freedom Hall will be renamed Isaac, after a slave the university sold in 1838. The university is taking several steps immediately, notably giving preferential status in admissions to descendants of enslaved people whose labor benefited Georgetown, a move in the right direction and a sign of the school’s sincerity.
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A second building will be named Anne Marie Becraft Hall, in honor of a free African-American woman who founded a school for black girls in the Georgetown neighborhood and later joined the Oblate Sisters of Providence, the oldest group of Roman Catholic nuns started by women of African descent.
