Transcripts For CSPAN3 Discussion Focuses On Slavery Jesuits And Georgetown University 20170116

Professor adam rothman talks about the jesuits, Roman Catholic religious order and their history during the 18th and 19th century as slave owners in maryland and the washington, d. C. Area. He also looks at how georgetown founded by the jesuits benefitted from the slave economy. This 90minute la tee sha woods brown memorial lek kmur is given annually to honor the pioneering africanamerican educator and historian and was part of a conference on washington, d. C. History. Id like to begin by thanking the Historical Society of washington, d. C. For the opportunity to deliver this years latisha woods brown lecture. Professor brown was a champion of the africanAmerican History of washington, d. C. And its a real thrill for me to be able to honor her work and life in this forum. It was really just touching and moving to hear your recollections of your grandmother. And i cant tell you how happy it makes me to hear from you that she would approve of and appreciate the work that were doing at georgetown. I mean, thats pretty much the best introduction ive ever gotten to talk in my life. I really appreciate that. I just hope that we would do her proud. Id also like to thank the National Archives for hosting us. And for all of you for being here in person or perhaps watching remotely through the magic of youtube or maybe later on cspan. I just really appreciate your interest in history. Sometimes these days it seems like teaching and learning about history is an uphill battle. Were so focused on the present. We look forward to the future. So few of us actually pause to reflect on the past on where weve come from and how it shapes who we are today. So to see so many people who are here to learn about history and to think about its impact on our world is truly heartening. College campuses especially the venerable ones like georgetown, you can see how venerable it is, georgetown, where i work, typically present very well manicured landscapes of historical memory. The Old Buildings stand as monuments to the past, even as their interiors are updated with wifi and glass and gleaming shiny things, coffee shops. The buildings are usually named after founders whose fame has faded. And in truth few people on campus really know who they actually were. Until those founders become infamous and the well manicured landscape of historical memory starts to show signs of blight. When i teach history at Georgetown University, i teach and write about slavery and emancipation largely in the deep south. But recently my attention has turned closer to home, i was going to say in our own backyard to my own institution. Last year i had the privilege of serving as a member of Georgetown Universitys working group on slavery, memory and reconciliation. The group was formed in september 2015 at the behest of the universitys president who asked us to reflect on how georgetown should, and i quote, acknowledge and recognize georgetowns historic relationship with the institution of slavery. Now, the immediate cause of the formation of the working group, what prompted the president to form this body was the reopening of a newly renovated hall, a hall named after reverend thomas f. Mullady of the society of jesus, who was a president of Georgetown University in the 1830s. Heres the problem, the scandal. With mullady, which is now well known, or at least i hope its well known. He orchestrated the mass sale of more than 200, nearly 300, men, women and children who were owned by the maryland jesuits in 1838. And he used at least part of the proceeds of that sale to rescue the college from debt. Its safe to say and rather shocking and hard to understand that georgetown really owes its existence to the sale of those slaves in 1838. The proceeds of that sale saved the college. President dejoia rightly grasped that the present was ripe for the Georgetown Community to have a difficult conversation about this history. And he did that, i think, for many reasons. He understood the moment for many reasons. One of them was all of the things that were roiling on College Campuses last year, the student protests against injustice, indignity that was being perpetrated on people of color. But also he knew the history of georgetown. He was aware of its roots in the institution of slavery. And i will add that new scholarship like professor craig wilders book ebony and ivy have put the issue of slavery and american colleges and universities back in our mental landscape. So we are our work builds on the shoulders of many other scholars and archivists and activists. And that whole community has helped us to do our work. I want to emphasize that georgetowns history of slavery was never a secret. A relatively small group of scholars, alumni and students, im one of them, has known about this history for a fairly long time. Theres excellent scholarship on the subject. And i especially want to applaud the efforts of one of my predecessors at georgetown who was briefly a colleague of mine, professor emmitt currun who is now retired. Professor currun wrote a buy centennial history of georgetown published in 1989, 1989, that exposed the colleges roots in slavery. He wrote about this 1838 sale and its consequences for the college. A long time before the working group started its work. Then in the 1990s our American Studies Program began to teach about georgetown enslavery incorporating this history into its curriculum and creating a pioneering website called the jesuits plantation project that published some of the same documents weve put on the georgetown slavery archive. So they did it well before we did. Student journalists including one member of the working group wrote about georgetowns slave holding past in campus newspapers and periodicals. And i might say scooping the Washington Post as they did so. And yet for all of this when the working group began its work last year we were surprised to discover how little we and most people knew about this subject. And how shocking georgetowns links to slavery were for most people around our community. Most people simply did not know the history. So i feel like that is a failure of scholars like myself whove written about this stuff but have not done enough to get it out to the public, to really have this history penetrate peoples consciousness both at the university and beyond it. This history, in a very real way, was lost to us, buried los underneath the universitys landscape of memory. It seems to me that the first step in truth and rek cconcilian is truth so recognizing it has become one of our key tasks. Its what ive been devoted to as a member of the working group. Now, to accomplish that weve been digging in archives at georgetown where the archives of the maryland province now reside and archives in other cases as well, including right here at the National Archives, which just has extraordinary material on the history of american slavery. So weve been digging around to find original documents that can shed light on this history. Were trying to make them available on our website called the georgetown slavery archives. So today id like to walk you through a handful of these documents to give you a sense of the depth and extent of georgetowns roots in american slavery and to introduce you to some of the central questions and challenges raised by this material. So we are a gathering of people who are interested in history so i hope you dont mind if i dwell on the past. Its really what we do. So to begin with this in the early 1600s a jesuit priest began to minister to newly arrived africans in the port city in what is today columbia. He worked at the Jesuit College there. He was a jesuit, 150 years before the founding of georgetown. As he met with the sick and dying africans, he began to have doubts about the morality of the system of slavery that he encountered. He began to ask some pesky questions of his colleagues around the atlantic world, like whether those africans he was meeting with had been illegally enslaved. A jesuit priest who was stationed across the ocean in what is today angola where many of the africans had been embarked actually wrote him a letter addressing his concerns, a truly remarkable letter that tried to ease his conscience. He included the letter in a published article called on restoring either oppositan salvation. Theres a page on the left and a part of the man you script on the right that i want to tell you about. I want to thank a graduate student for finding it for me. Its good to have students. Dont worry, he wrote. Wise men of good conscience do not find slavery represent hencible. Thats a quotation from the letter. Rather, the jesuits buy slaves, quote, without feeling any guilt, unquote. It was true he admitted that no black slave quote ever admitted he deserved to be enslaved, but he warned him not to ask for their opinions. Can you imagine . Quote, they will always say they were stolen or taken illegally hoping this will help them get their freedom, end quote. Thats why you shouldnt ask them. The father doubted too many souls were saved through enslavement to worry about the few who might have actually been enslaved. On this page is the text of the letter. Now, saduvall bought the argument. He made peace with slavery and devoted his life to saving the souls of the hundred thousand captive africans. Although it took place a long way from the founding of georgetown, i mention this correspondence between saduvall because it tells us something important about the intellectual, religious and social world of enslavery that the maryland jesuits came to inhib inhib inhabit. They had long prized salvation over earthly freedom. In fact, the Jesuit College where saduvall worked went so far as to purchase enslaved africans who served as translators to aid saduvalls missionary efforts. Moreover, the attempt to justify slavery required saduvall and his fellow jesuits to dismiss, ignore and ultimately silence captive africans own protests against their enslavement, to listen to them, to take their grievances seriously would have threatened the entire enterprise. Saduvall published his treaties. I cant say whether they knew about it or not. Probably didnt. What we do know is it took decades to get slavery firmly implanted in maryland. For a half century servantss supplied the labor force. It was not until the 1690s that africans began to arrive in the colony and the labor force began to tilt toward slavery. The jesuits participated in marylands great transition from servitude to slavery and became in some cases large slave owners in the first half of the 18th century. The record youre looking at now dates back to that era, what the university of maryland historian, one of the great historians of american slavery, calls the plantation generation of slavery in colonel north america. This is a list of slaves that were brought to the st. Joseph mission on the eastern shore. I want to draw your attention to the first name in the list, a woman named nanny. You see it, first name . A woman named nanny. Shes identified in this record as a 55yearold negro. The names are tant liesing. You want to know so much more about who these people are, but theres just so little information. Her name was nanny and she was born in africa around 1710. Thats all we know right now. All we really know is whats on that page. Nanny is the only enslaved person in the maryland province mentioned in the maryland province archives who ive come across so far who is identified as being african born. And this record is perhaps the sole piece of evidence linking the maryland jesuit Slave Community to their african origins. The other people on this list were all born in maryland and baptized with english names like tom, frank and lussy. Most of the slaves named in the archives, their last names are not recorded. All of this are symptoms of what the sos olgs called the ali alienation of slavery, cutting off people from their ancestry. From the first indication of jesuit slave holding in maryland in the 1710s, the jesuit planation continued to grow across the 18th century. A census counted nearly 200 slaves on the plantations. The plantations were located in Southern Maryland in st. Marys and charles county, but there were missions and plantations further north on the eastern shore. The suppression of the jesuits posed new challenges for the leadership and new organizations formed to steward the jesuits property and slaves, including the corporation of Roman Catholic clergymen. Georgetown college was founded to advance education in 1789 and it was established by the maryland catholic planter elite and a jesuit order that was deeply invested in slavery at the local level. The basic idea was that the jesuit plantations would help to pay for the churches and the schools. So georgetown rests on the foundation of a slave economy. Now, the jesuits and their catholic congregation were not the only people in maryland to draw inspiration from the ideas of the American Revolution. It was really to prove there was a place for catholics in this new republic that georgetown was founded. It seems that the jesuits own slaves also drew inspiration from the ideas of the American Revolution and thought that the principals of freedom and equality articulated by the revolution should apply to them. In the late 18th and early 19th centuries a number of slaves belonging to jesuit owners, including owners closely affiliated with georgetown, sued in local courts for their freedom. Three families in particular, the butlers, mahoneys and the queens took their owners to court and in some cases were successful. One of these freedom seekers was a man named edward queen who filed this complaint against reverend john ashton with the General Court of the western shore in 1791. I dont know how from where youre sitting if you can read the handwriting in this petition, but i can assure you this is among the more ledgible documents that weve encountered. I should add as well that this document comes from a wonderful website created by the university of nebraska, Professor William thomas, about these various freedom suits in the early republic. So this is an example of the kind of collaboration and other peoples scholarship that weve really benefited from. So if you can read this petition, queen is claiming his freedom on the basis of dissent from a free woman named mary queen who was his grandmother. Much like those captive africans, edward queen claimed to be illegally enslaved, but in this case queen won this. He was heard and he won his case in the maryland courts in 1794. Queen was a member of what berlin calls the revolutionary generation of american slaves. And hes also part of this moment of transition in the chesapeake after the American Revolution when theres a brief window of opportunity for enslaved people to make their way to freedom. This is a moment when the population of free people of color began to expand tremendously. Ill add one of the pioneering historians of free people of color in this region was la tissua woodsbrown. Its worth noting that in granting queen his freedom on the relatively narrow ground of his free born grandmother let me remind you that in the law of slavery in maryland and most other places in the americas, the children of enslaved women were also slaves. So status followed the mother. And not only did their status follow the mother, not only were the children of save women be slaves, but they would be owned by their mothers owner. But if your mother is free, you by rights should be free as well. Thats the basis for edward queens claim to freedom. But in granting queen freedom on the narrow ground of his free born grandmother, the courts also implicitly affirmed the enslavement of thousands of other enslaved people who could not establish their birthright in court. You can see here the powers that be in the Slave Society trying to make up rules by which slavery would be governed. It was a Legal Institution that operated by certain rules. Now, rev laerend ashton was an irish born jesuit stationed in Prince George as county. Hes listed with 82 slaves next to his name. One of the biggest planters in the region. He also happened to be a founder of the clergymen and one of the first directors of Georgetown College. Its remarkable how many references to slavery turn up in the early records of the college itself. The First College ledgers, which record the students coming into the college and paying for room and board, their expenses, those first ledgers record the hiring of slaves. One was named suki. She was hired to the college by her owner, william digs, for ten pounds a year, from 1792 to 1797. It was the use of hiring and renting slaves. The father recorded daily life at the college noted the presence of 13, quote, colored persons. Thats how he described them in his journal, out of 101 people in all. So 13 of the people at the college were slaves. Who they were or what they did he failed to mention, but a later entry records the burial of a man he calls billy the black smith, probably a slave, who was buried in the College Graveyard probably attended by many students. The church next to the college recorded slaves getting baptized and married right next door to the campus and william gaston, the First Student many of our sort of grand lectures and occasions are held in gaston hall, he came from a wealthy slave owning family in North Carolina. He went on to become a distinguished judge on the North Carolina Supreme Court ruling in one case that a slave had a right to life and in another that free people of color could be citizens of his state. That was remarkable progressive before the civil war. I think its important to understand that the significance of the use of slave labor at georgetown and its close ties to slavery are not just an economic question, although they certainly are, but theres something deeper going on here. Its about the way these institutions, churches and schools shape the moral order of society, the normative order of society. So if people add george town, the faculty and the president s of georgetown are routinely buying and selling slaves, hiring slaves, what does that say to everybody else . It says that this is a perfectly reasonable, perfectly normal, perfectly moral institution. I think you cannot underestimate the ideological effect of the participation of a place like georgetown or the jesuit order in slave holding. One slave at georgetown in these early years was a man named isaac who ran away from the college during the war of 1812, in january of 1814. Father mack ilroy advertised his escape in a washington newspaper as you can see here. This is a runaway slave ad in thousands and thousands of american newspapers, but this happened to be one posted by a jesuit who was working at Georgetown College. It says he offered a 30 reward for of the return of isaac, who ran away from Georgetown College on saturday night, the 29th instant the negro man named isaac, about 58 high. So the advertisement gives a physical description of isaac, tells the readers what he was wearing when he fled and speculate hes probably got a change of clothing with him. It also notes that isaac could read and may have procured a pass to allow him to move freely about the countryside. It guessed he might be on his way to pennsylvania, a freer state in 1814 than maryland was. Understand even if even if isaac had gotten to maryland, that wouldnt make him free. Under the fugitive slave clause of the constitution he was still bound to service and could be returned to the college. These runaway ads are very one sided. We only get the perspective of the owner and in most cases you have no idea what actually happened, but in this case the journal actually fills out some of the details. Turns out isaac was captured and thrown in jail in baltimore and reverend neil, a colleague, sold him as punishment. There was not much mercy shown to isaac. Once the war of 1812 included, the maryland jesuits began to wrestle with the problem of slavery. But they did not exactly wrestle with it in an ab lushist way, the way we might have expected them to wrestle with it. A jesuit brother wrote a letter to the president of georgetown in february of 1815 to propose getting rid of the slaves either by selling them off or freeing them. Quote, it is better to sell for a time or to set your people free, he wrote. And these were his reasons. First, because we have their souls to answer for. Second, because blacks are more difficult to govern now than formerly and maybe had isaac and edward queen in mind. And third, because we shall make more and more to our satisfaction. And what followed in this letter was a careful comparison to the cost of slave labor with the cost of hiring white laborers and mobilely included that the shift, that shifting to free white workers would provide substantial savings to the jesuits. For the next 20 years the maryland jesuits grappled over whether to sell their human property, to free them or maintain the status quo. One jesuit propose in hd freeinm and sending them to sigh berreea. By the 1830s the jesuit plantations were becoming uncreau increasingly unprofitable. Slavery was coming under attack and georgetown itself had fallen on hard times. The college was saddled with debt. Under the leadership the jesuits made the fateful decision to sell most of their slaves to two catholic planters in louisiana, Henry Johnson and jessie batie. Henry johnson had been the governor of louisiana so this is not an insignificant person. They agreed to sell the slaves to johnson and batey for 115,000 in 1838 money, which depending how you count is at about a minimum about 3 million today. They made sure to sell to catholic owners so as not to betray their religious obligation to care for the slaves souls. In fact, that was one of the conditions that was put on the sale by the church in rome that wasnt too happy about it. But they did not ask the slaves whether they would like to be sold to louisiana, which was notorious to black people in the upper south for being akin to a death sentence. I should say that some of these documents can be very tough to take. I mean, i show them to you because i think its important to confront directly the evidence of slavery in the historical record, but i do recognize that they can be very difficult to look at. It turns out the 1838 sale is one of the most richly documented mass sales of slaves in American History. The records offer an unusual window into the domestic slave trade and the uprooting and transplantation of virtually an entire Slave Community from the upper south to the deep south. Historians estimate that roughly 1 million slaves, 1 million men, women and children were subjected to forced migration between 1790 and 1860 in the United States, transportation from the upper south to the deep south. Some went by land trekking hundreds of miles. Others were boarded on to steam boats and literally sold down the river. The maryland jesuit slaves went by a coastal route. They sailed from the chesapeake to new orleans. Its hard to wrap your head around 1 million. Its a big number. You can only think about it in an abstract way. So i think its the stories of individuals or families and communities like the maryland jesuit slaves that allow us to grasp the trauma of that second Middle Passage on a human scale. This 1838 sale is documented in several ways. They signed be a contract in june of 1838 agreeing to sale 282 slaves and the terms of the sale are laid out as well, financial transaction. Later that year the slaves were sold and three additional bills of sale identified the people who would be sold to johnson and those who would be sold to ba y batey. There were still other transactions because some of the jesuits were married to slaves of nonjesuits and the jesuits were under orders from rome not to separate these families so what to do about this situation. The jesuits appear to have sold some of their own slaves to the owners of their slaves spouses and purchased other spouses to send with their own slaves to louisiana. Were still piecing that part together. Before the sale the jesuits took a census of 272 slaves slated to be sold identifying them by family groups and the plantations where they lived, newtown, white marsh and st. Thomas manor. This particular bill of sale is from thomas to jessie batey. You can see, if you can read this is actually a very ledgible script. You can see that most most of the people listed in this contract are identified only by their first name, a few last names are included, such as the first name on this contract nace bu butler, 50 years of age. Bibby, 45 and her infant. Bibby is nances wife. The names that follow, henry, tom, mary, tom, lewis, justin and rose, are all the butlers children. It was a decentant of nace and bibby butler, who has a real talent for genology, who first discovered her own Family History in these records more than one decade ago. And the work that Patricia Johnson did tracking her own Family History has been a real inspiration and a source of knowledge for those of us at georgetown working on this history. The 1838 sale involved families that had been formed over multiple generations. They had been in maryland for a long time, more than 100 years in many cases. And now they were being uprooted and sent to a strange distant place. Another very important document in tracing the movement of the maryland jesuit slaves from the chesapeake to the deep south is this document, which is the top of a manifest, the vessel called the katherine jackson, which sailed to new orleans carrying many of the slaves on board. The original of this manuscript is located in fort worth and i want to take this opportunity to thank the archivists there for working with us to locate this document and digitize it. One of the important features of this manifest is that it recorded a lot more last names for the jesuit slaves than one can find in the jesuits own recordkeeping. Ive heard a lot over the past year of how great the jesuit recordkeeping was and im here to tell you it wasnt that great. They could have done a better job and a number of things, but one of the things thats really built into the jesuit recordkeeping is a failure to record the last names of the slaves. We know they have them from other from Subsequent Records like the manifest and records in louisiana, but those last names in most cases will not appear in the jesuits own records. But those last names included butler and diggs and hawken hawd hill. Some of you from this area may recognize many of those names as common names in this region. Common names among africanamericans. Thats because the community was divided. There were people who were slaves and people who were free who shared these names and these histories. But the sale in 1838 picks up the jesuit Slave Community and pulls it out of that context and plops them down in louisiana. Now, in many cases in the history of the domestic slave trade its difficult, very difficult, if not entirely impossible, to trace slaves sold in the upper south to their destinations in the deep south. Although there are literally tens of thousands of enslaved people recorded on these ship manifests in the National Archives and a lot of them have been digitized, you can search these manifests, figuring out what happened to them once they got off these boats is tough to do. Thats another reason why this case, the georgetown case of the maryland jesuit Slave Community is so valuable for Historical Research because we know where they ended up. At least many of them. Not all of them, but many of them. Some ended up on Henry Johnsons plantation in louisiana while others ended up on bateys west oak plantation in louisiana. So we know where they ended up. Moreover, we know that their experience of being bought and sold continued in louisiana up to the civil war. So 1838 was not the last time these people were sold. Henry johnson fell into financial difficulty shortly after purchasing all of these slaves and he had to renegotiate the terms of his purchase in the 1840s and 1850s. That money is slojing around coffers for decades. Its another thing they werent that great about keeping records on. Ultimately Henry Johnson sold his plantation i believe in 1850s to a man im not making this up. He was named John Thompson. I dont think any relation. The batey slaves were sold at least two more times as the plantation passed to bateys heirs after he died. They sold them to the borro family and then they were sold in again in 1856. On the eve of the plantation was in the possession of a woman named emily wofolk in louisiana. She was the widow of one of the most infamous domestic slave traders in American History. The records allow us to trace many, but not all, of the maryland jesuit slaves into the era of emancipation. Some of them and their children appear in the 1870 census. Once you can find people in the 1870 census it becomes much easier to trace them through the standard methods of genology. The problem is for many africanamericans trying to trace ancestors the 1870s becomes a brick wall because the census didnt identify enslaved people by name, just their owners. There are these slave schedules in the 1850 and 1860 census that actually count the number of slaves owned by each own,er, but the slaves are only listed by number, not by name. Only by number, not by name. So you have to go to records like the ones ive shown you, property records, baptismal records if they exist to try to trace genology back to the days of slavery. So these are the kinds of records that have made it possible for the decentants of the maryland Slave Community to be discovered and for them to come to know their own history as has been happening for the last several months, but this particular document that youre looking at now i apologize. This is definitely unreadable to all of us, but this is this is from a digital scan of a microfilm of documents here at the National Archives in the Freedmans Bureau records, which are one of the most extraordinary sets of records in all of American History documenting that moment that process of emancipation. So the document that youre looking at now is a payroll record that was filed with the Freedmans Bureau in louisiana at the end of 1865. And this is a payroll record for newly freed people on the west oak plantation in the parish. At least some of these people were members of the maryland jesuit Slave Community and their children. But theyre no longer slaves here. Theyre in fact recorded as freed men or men and women. In this record, this record actually records their wages for the year 1865, an indication they are now getting paid for their work. This is an image of what freedom looked like in 1865. Is it real freedom . How free were they . These are the kinds of questions that we can begin to ask. Back to georgetown. Georgetown college and the maryland jesuits continued to be involved with slavery after 1838 despite the sale of most of the slaves to louisiana. Not all of the jesuit slaves were sent to louisiana. Some managed to escape being sold literally by escaping. An 1867 census of slaves emancipated in maryland shows one family of slaves in st. Marys parish headed by a woman who was owned by the corporation of Roman Catholic clergymen, i think theyre the last of the maryland jesuit slaves. Slaves continued to provide labor at the college and students from slaveowning families continued to attend georgetown. Georgetown colleges southern orientation explains why the majority of georgetown students and alumni who fought in the civil war fought for guess which side . The confederacy. They fought for the corner stone of slavery. It was after the war that georgetowns ties to slavery got buried in the landscape of memory. Ill give you two examples of this. One is in the career of the man on the left, reverend Patrick Heely of the society of jesus known as georgetowns second founder. He served as president of georgetown from 1872 to 1874 to 1882 and helped to build several New Buildings on campus. He was born into slavery. He was the son of an irish cotton planter in georgia and a slave woman. His father recognized his paterni paternity of him and his siblings. He was sent to a Catholic School in the north and ultimately entered the jesuit order where he rose to prominence to the position of president of georgetown. But essentially he passed for white as the jesuits had to conceal his ancestry from the public. He recently his ancestry wasnt really discovered and made public until scholars figured it out in the beginning of the 1950s, upon which teime e was claimed of the first africanamerican president of a predominantly white university. Hes celebrated in this way at georgetown, even though very few people at the time knew he was not white. So we can also see this burial of the history of slavery in georgetowns school colors, the blue and the gray. Those colors were actually chosen by georgetowns crew team in the year of 1876, a year that marked the end of reconstruction. They chose those colors as a sign of sectional reconciliation between northern and southern students. This is the this is on the Georgetown University librarys web page. This is georgetowns alma mater that was written for the occasion of this unveiling of the colors. And today these are our colors. I mean, im wearing blue and gray right now. This is georgetown. But we know that sectional reconciliation, the union of blue and gray after the civil war was purchased at the expense of the rights of africanamericans. And the memory of the politics of slavery. So White White White students from the north and south, they could really only reconcile with each other if they all forgot about that problem with slavery, which is why they were fighting in the first place. The first black undergraduate had georgetown was not admitted until 1950. His name was samuel halsy jr. Think of it. For 150 years white students were admitted to georgetown, walked through all the doors of opportunity that their education opened up to them, while black students were excluded, despite the fact that georgetown virtually owes its existence to slave labor. I think compared to that reality healeys imperceptible blackness is little con sol lash. So my proposal Going Forward georgetowns colors should be blue, gray and black. What now . Where do we go from here . My walking tour through the archives is concluding. So we worked on this we worked on this history. We worked on uncovering this history, building the slavery archive, getting the story out to the Georgetown Community, hearing from members of our community about what this history meant to them, gathering knowledge from scholars of slavery and emancipation and africanAmerican History about what all this meant, including professor wilder from mit. So we gathered all this knowledge and tried to figure out what do we do to come to terms with this history. So we wrote up a report, this working group that was composed of students and faculty and staff and alumni of a Diverse Group of people and we came up with a report. This is the report. Its available on Georgetown Universitys slavery memory and reconciliation website, slaverygeorgetown. Com and it provides a rashal of how we should proceed. It suggests we remake that landscape of memory on campus in part by renaming the two jesuit halls for the president s that were responsible for the sale of the slaves. Opportunities protested in the fall and it was renamed to freedom and remembrance hall. One of the halls be named after an enslaved man named isaac, who is the first person listed in the articles of agreement. He symbolizes that maryland jesuit Slave Community that was sacrificed to save georgetown. We also know that isaac was the patriarch of the hawkins family, multiple generations that were sold and transported to louisiana. So we know something about isaac. The second building we recommended to be named after it was a truly remarkable women named ann marie beecraft, an africanamerican who became a none and was a real pioneer in the education of africanamerican women in georgetown. Not at Georgetown College where they were excluded, but outside the gates. She has largely been forgotten, but she ought to be remembered. One of the great africanamerican historians of the 19th century called her one of the most remarkable people to live in the city, so we should remember her. We want to do that. We want to create a memorial to slavery at georgetown that will be an enduring moment to that history. We want to create historical plaques around campus that expose this history, excavate it, so its no longer buried. We want to continue this research on slavery and its legacies. We have this incredible archive, which the scholars and public can use to work through so many different aspects of the history of slavery. The georgetown story is a micro skochl of the history of slavery in the United States as we can see through one community. The working Group Recommended outreach to the decentascendant the maryland Slave Community, those sent to louisiana and those who might have remained behind. One of the great joys of the work weve been engaged in is to get to know these people and to help them recover their family histories, to hear their perspective on what this history means to them. Weve had some groups come to georgetown. Ive been with them where they look at these documents in person and find the names of their ancestors. Thats for me has been a really remarkable experience. I think for a long time im an academic, i write about things that happened a long time ago. For me what this has done i think has sort of collapsed the distance between the past and the present and make it all the more meaningful. So part of the recommendations was an institution apology. Were sorry for having participated in this inhumane kind of institution. Apologies may not be worth that much, but if you back them up i think with substantial gestures of contrition and reconciliation then maybe they do mean something. Finally, i would say that and ultimately the goal is that examining this history, thinking about it and reflecting upon it will be an inspiration for all of us to search out our own moral blind spots where what are we failing to recognize today in the way the university conducts its business, the way we conduct our business. In what ways are we repeating the mistakes of the leadership of the georgetown 150 years ago. Not exactly the same, but our own mistakes that come out of a failure of moral imagination and especially with respect to the enduring legacies of slavery and racist discrimination today, racism and racist forms of injustice in our own backyard and further afield. Ultimately for me i think the tremendous one of the tremendous values of doing this work over the past year is just to see the tremendous response from members of the Georgetown Community, from descendants and from the public and all of you showing up here today to listen to me ramable through this history. I think what it shows, what it can show, ultimately is that history really does matter. So thank you for listening. [ applause ] so are there questions . If you have a question, please come to one of the microphones so that everybody can hear you. Good afternoon. Id like to thank you for the work that youve done on this project. Ive been doing a lot of reading lately that says that the trauma of slavery is in the dna of africanamericans today and id like to acknowledge that tonight. I also would like to say that you asked how this information couldnt be known. I suggest tonight that even in the Information Age were in today and with the elections upon us, theres information that we still dont know. So how and my question to you is, how was it for you working on this project and what kind of feelings did you experience doing the research . Thank you for that question. I had a range of feelings and emotions as i engaged in this work. The first was a sense of terror that was born out of a saeense get this right especially as it become more of a public, there were a lot of people looking closely at the work we were doing and that puts a lot of pressure on you as a scholar and you just really want to get it right. So that was part of it. Just curiosity is another. Curiosity is an important part for a historian for a thinking person to have. You want to know how do i make sense of this . How is it possible that the jesuit leaders of georgetown could bap ties their slaves one day and sell them the next . How do you make sense of that apparent paradox . So theres a kind of curiosity to know how did this happen and what was going through their heads and a greater curiosity to know what it meant for the slaves themselves. Was there any way through the records we had available to get at their perspective, which so hidden in the records. Thats one reason why its been so amazing to get to know some of the descendants because they have Family History and lure. Especially those who remained in maryland, the descendants of maceon for instance. They always knew their connection to the jesuits. That is not so much in the records, but its in their family lore. So being able to learn that was heartening and very gratifying. Hi. I am a perspective student from the department of history. Id like to ask if other plantations, if the slaves were as domestic slaves and if the jesuits hired out slaves for the Washington Society and if you have records of that . Yeah. So the slaves in the maryland Jesuit Community and at the college performed a very wide range of labor. Out on the plantations they performed agricultural work, but there were also artisans, carpenters and blacksmiths and managers of those plantations actually hired out their labor to their neighbors. For instance, women, especially around campus, worked as laund ress and cooks. Its interesting, the college renting out slaves. It wasnt so much that the college rented its slaves to its neighbors in georgetown, its that georgetown neighbors rented their slaves to the college. So theres also that relationship between the college and the neighborhood around georgetown. This is a little this is not part of that story, but if any of you dont know the story of a man named mammut, who lived in the neighborhood of georgetown just blocks away from the college, its an incredible story. He was an he was born in africa. Transported through the slave trade to the chesapeake. Lived in the neighborhood of georgetown and he was a brick maker and earned enough money as a brick maker to purchase his own freedom so he lived as a freedom person loaning money to neighbors in georgetown. He was renowned as a devout muslim. So muslims have been around for a long time in this country. His portrait was actually painted more than once and hes one of the faces of the Africanamerican Community in georgetown that its a remarkable story. Its just another indication that theres so many stories that we still have to tell. That one has been told. I went to georgetown. I graduated from 62. I slept in healey hall and ive been to gaston hall, but when i was at georgetown, everybody had to take large amounts of philosophy and we i can remember my senior year we had five times a week we had ethics. And im trying to theres a certain incon grusance i see here. Im wondering does the georgetown Ethics Department now look look at this situation and discuss it with the does the University Talk about this we had to take ethics, because we were going to be ethical people. And the university doesnt seem like its behaved ethically. It didnt. But i one of the one of the hopes coming out of this project is that across the university, people will integrate and absorb this history into their classes. No matter what they teach. Theology, philosophy, economics, business, performing arts, all every discipline can think about this history in its own way. And thats beginning to happen. That is beginning to happen. There are several courses planned for next semester that are really engaged with this history. And i think across the university community, people are talking p it. Not just the park, but across the university. And this is precisely the kind of history that can sharpen our understanding of what it might mean to be ethical. So i appreciate that. I really appreciate that comment. Thank you so much for your research. I have two quick questions. First, you joked about John Thompson being one of the slave owners. But wonder if John Thompson the coach has come into the issue at all. And also historically, georgetown, the neighborhood actually has a large africanamerican population. Im wondering if the community over the years has come known and even recognizes this history while the university itself might have been quiet . I dont know what coach says about this. I know that that coach thompson was at the event at gaston hall on september 1st. So theyre surely aware. I know the students im sure the students on the team are very aware of this. All of the students at georgetown now are what was your second question . Just the community oh, yeah, right. So, yeah. One of my colleagues in the History Department, maurice jackson, who actually knows a great deal more about the history of washington than i do, he was very involved in the book project called black georgetown remembered. Which is a terrific book. And anybody, with any interest in the history of africanAmerican History in washington really, i think, would enjoy and appreciate that book. That book talks about georgetown as an Africanamerican Community. Going back to the era of slavery. So again, there are people who know this history. I dont know if most of the people who live in georgetown today know that history. But its something we could all learn. I guess considering the for 40 years of the period that you covered, jesus didnt exist per se. So it might be hard to answer this question. But in the document of mr. Queens petition, it was witnessed by what looked to be a priest. Yeah. I dont know if he was episcopal yan, catholic, jesuit. Im sure he wasnt a good friend with the father afterwards. Im wondering if we know how much we know about protesting catholics. Especially given the obedience to rome and to baltimore, what kind of what do we know about their conflict . This guy seems to be someone who was on the side of mr. Queen. If i was dealing with petitions like this, thats what i might conclude. What do we know about priests who found themselves on the opposite side of the establishment . Great. Thank you. Yeah, the witness here is reverend thomas diggs, a catholic priest. I have to say, reverend ashton was seems to have been a bit of an oddball, an outcast from his fellow jesuits. As far as i know, theres no building in georgetown named after ashton. Hes sort of buried in the landscape of memory as well. I just dont really know what goes on with reverend diggs and ashton. I should say that so professor has done great work on these freedom suits. And theres been some scholarships, for instance, that was very involved as lawyers on behalf of the slaves. So thats an interesting side note. But i think it is really important to note that there was a big debate within the Jesuit Community in the 1820s and 1830s about what to do about slavery. That debate had a lot of dimensions to it. The americanborn jesuits seemed to be more comfortable with slavery than the european jesuits. So that was a dimension of the debate. There were those who didnt think the slaves should be sold, but didnt think they should be freed either. They thought the jesuits had a responsibility to be stewards for the souls of their slaves. And keep them as slaves. But there are other jesuits who did champion schemes for emancipation. Joseph carbury, for instance, is known to have proposed a scheme of emancipation over a period of years that would have turned the slaves into free tenant farmers on the jesuit properties. So theres a debate among the jesuits about what should be done. Thomas mullady is called back to rome after the sale, because the leadership was pretty unhappy with what he did. Mostly because they discovered that he uses the proceeds of the sale to pay off the debt of the college, which is one of the things rome explicitly said he should not do. So they werent happy with that. But then mullady is rehabilitated, i guess, and is sent back to the states where he then found holy cross, i believe. So theres really no particularly vocal protests, public protests against the sale from within the jesuit or Catholic Community that we know of. It does appear that carbury might have actually harbored louisa mason and her family to keep them from being sold to louisiana. The details of that are a bit murky. But there was a debate about it. Good evening. And thank you, professor, rothman, for this tremendous work youre doing. I also appreciate your desire to get it right. It is a very important work. With that said, you stated that one of the objectives of the georgetown memory project is outreach to descendents. And you mentioned the work of Patricia Johnson, and ive read some articles, new york times, Washington Post, and there were statements at the end of the article, if you believe youre a descendent, please contact us, i want to know what efforts are being made by the university to initiate that contact. You mentioned your colleagues work from 1989, the story has been known for years, the 1838 sale in particular, but the story wasnt really wellknown. So aside from ak a de missions knowing, and people in this community, the actual descendants of the maryland jesuit Slave Community, what is the university doing to reach out to them . Well, part of a few things. Maybe not everything we should be doing, but a few things. So one thing is that by creating these websites, the archive and the memory reckonciliation website, thats a vehicle for people to contact us who think they might be descendents. So weve gotten a lot of inquiries from people, wanting to know if they have a if theyre descendents, how to find that out, that sort of thing. So i think these websites have been part of that outreach, trying to do events like this, and talk to journalists in different places, Southern Maryland, and louisiana, that might reach that public. Just trying to get the story out there. So more and more people who think they might have some intuition, some sense from Family History that they might be connected can reach out to us. There is this separate entity called georgetown memory project, which is actually independent from what the university is doing. That was set up by our alumnus, richard selini. And theyve been doing a lot of genealogical research. He first reached out to some of the descendents to tell them about this connection. So hes continuing his work. Were collaborating with them, trying to, you know, put out more and more documents that can help people place these histories. So thats basically what were doing. Thank you. And if anybody is watching out there, on youtube or cspan, if you recognize if your name is one of the last names that ive mentioned, or you see in the documents, you know, if you are from one of the counties in Southern Maryland, or one of the parrishs in louisiana, where these folks ended up, if you think you might have a connection, please do reach out to us. And we can help you find out. Really excellent scholarship, thank you very much. My question has to do with how easy or difficult was it as an archivist going through these records, if someone at the university of nebraska who has a separate set of Scholarly Research going on, maryland, and georgetown now, how easy or difficult has it been to collect this information . It seems like youve had to go quite far afield to find these documents. Thank you. Thanks. You really ask a question that is near and dear to my heart. Youre asking a historian where they get their souss. Its like, wow, this guy just opened up the sunshine town. So the first place is in georgetowns own or kifs. The maryland archives, the society of the jesuits in maryland, the 130 boxes of material. Plus theres other boxes of like connected archives. Its a lot of stuff. Luckily theyre finding aides, and scholarships that cite sources, so we can locate some of the most relevant material right there in georgetown. Even just going through the material at georgetown is a pretty about endeavor. And luckily there is a bunch of us students and in the History Department and archivists in the library who are combing through that stuff. But thats not where everything is. So i think ive shown you a bit where some of that other stuff is. I mean, weve used material here at the National Archives. The ship map fest, a lot of the material is in the archives in louisiana, courthouses where else. Courthouses. So weve just tried to cast a wide net. Anytime you sort of smell a potential source, youve got to go chase it down. So were just beginning. I think were just scratching the surface of all the sources that are really available to research this history. And we really havent even gotten into the postwar period so far, and what happened to these families afterwards. So its a big project that requires a lot of partners, and a lot of different places. And to me, thats been one of the most interesting parts to it. Just sort of chasing down these sources. And finding partners who can help us do that. And i should add, that the written that the documents in the archive are never sufficient. You have to supplement whats been written down with things like the oral history of desen dent families. Which tell us things that will never appear in archives, and give us a perspective that we can never get any other way. So we have to complement the documentary record with other ways of getting at historical truth. I think thats also an important dimension of this project. Hi. My name is ruth truecoli. That was a perfect leadin to my question, because im a big proponent that archaeological evidence is an additional and parallel record to the written documentation. And its through archaeology that we can give the voice to the voiceless, through the material that remains that they left behind. But thats not actually what i came up here to say. So i was one of the founding directors of the search for the archaeological project you mentioned in georgetown. Thank you. Theres a session saturday at 3 15. Im sure ill be there. But one of the outcomes of that project is that im working with a scholar, or the whole team is working with a scholar whos a student at howard university, a ph. D. Candidate. And his name is Muhammad Abdur amen. When you talk about the rationalization of jesuits for slavery, muhammad is working in the archives, the islamic archives in morocco, and hes encountered similar parallel explanation or rationalization for slavery there. And he is looking at letters from enslaved africans who were brought over here and were literal in arabic and wrote back to the cal a fat asking for relief from slavery. Their response was basically, you are free in your mind, and make peace with it. So in a sense, the rationalization is coming because of the economic aspects. No one wants to start buying the freedom of the slaves, whether they were muslims or not. And it gives you a whole different perspective on what slavery is and how it worked in the world system. Which is an unexpected result of digging on a vacant property in georgetown. Thank you. [ applause ] thank you. You never quite know where history will take you. I think that was it . Yeah . Okay. Im told that that was the last question. So thank you so much. I appreciate it. [ applause ] youre watching American History tv. Covering history cspan style, with tours of museums, archival film, eyewitness accounts, and discussions with authors, historians and teachers. You can watch us on cspan3 every weekend during congressional breaks and on holidays, too. For more information, visit our website at cspan. Org history. Our cspan bus travels to local schools, colleges and universities in communities across the country. Recently our bus stopped in hampton, virginia, visiting students at Hampton High School. Heres a video students made about our visit. Its pretty hard to miss the cspan bus outside of Hampton High School today. Inside, students are receiving an informational session about cspans mission. Cspans bus goes around our nation speaking to high school students, colleges and universities, and also speaking at political gatherings. Lets take an inside look. Awesome. 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