In 1838, the school sold 272 slaves to pay its debts and keep the school afloat. The university also plans to establish an institute for the study of slavery, and to create a public memorial honoring slaves from whom Georgetown benefited. “While Georgetown was not alone in participating in the institution of slavery and we can not alone undo the damage that has been done, we will not shrink from our obligations and we will seek ways to contribute to building a more just society”.
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“We provide care and respect for the members of the Georgetown community: faculty, staff, alumni, those with an enduring relationship with Georgetown”, DeGioia said.
The slaves were sent from Maryland to plantations in Louisiana, where they “laboured under terrible conditions on cotton and sugar plantations”, according to the Georgetown report, entitled Slavery, Memory and Reconciliation.
DeGioia, who seemed moved by the moment, thanked the group and said the university would consult closely with descendants going forward on matters large and small related to reconciliation. But, at the very least, Georgetown’s directive is the first of many steps to rectify the indelible mark of slavery on American colleges and universities. Princeton University’s first eight presidents owned slaves.
More than a dozen universities in the United States – including Brown, Harvard and the University of Virginia – have publicly recognized their ties to slavery and the slave trade.
The history of the American college is in fact a chapter in the history of American slavery. But in recent years, often amid pressure from students, some colleges have sought to confront their pasts.
The group found slave labor was used across the campus, including to construct the earliest buildings on campus. But replicating it would be impossible at most other schools, he said, because few records were kept at the time that could be used to trace descendants.
It was one of several steps DeGioia detailed as part of a plan to begin to deal with what he called “Georgetown’s participation in that disgrace”, meaning slavery.
In a historic change of fortune, current university president John J. DeGioia announced September 1 that the building will be renamed after one of the men the university sold as a result of the priest’s decision. DeGioia said that will happen at a “mass of reconciliation” with the Archdiocese of Washington.
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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. It will rename McSherry Hall as Anne Marie Becraft Hall in honor of Anne Marie Becraft, “a free woman of color who founded a school for black girls in the neighborhood of Georgetown in 1827”.
