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 CarolinaSupreme 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 de