Loading...
Loading...
Click here if you don’t see subscription options
GU272 descendent Carolyn Smith gestures toward gravestones of descendants of enslaved people in Houma, La. Behind her are sugar plantations and the sugar mill where her ancestors worked. Photo by Claire Vail.

(RNS) — A genealogical association has launched a new website detailing the family histories of slaves who were sold to keep Catholic-run Georgetown University from bankruptcy in the 1800s.

American Ancestors announced the new GU272 Memory Project website on Wednesday (June 19), the anniversary of Juneteenth, the day in 1865 when some American slaves learned they had been freed.

Twenty-seven years earlier, a document dated June 19, 1838, showed that Maryland Jesuit priests sold 272 slaves to the owners of Louisiana plantations. The Jesuits used the proceeds to benefit then-Georgetown College.

But the website includes a spreadsheet of 314 individuals whom genealogists have identified as being part of the group sold by the Jesuit priests. It also features audio recordings in which descendants recall memories, from segregated education to family migration away from the South.

“Having descendant voices present alongside historical documents is an essential part of the GU272 narrative,” said Claire Vail, the project’s director for American Ancestors, in an announcement about the website. “Documents provide the factual framework, but people supply the human story.”

Descendants are learning new links to their pasts as a result of the project.

“As Black Americans — as descendants of enslaved people — we have always been told ‘you’ll never know who you are. You’ll never know where you came from,’” said Mélisande Short-Colomb, a descendant of the group of slaves, in a statement about the project.

“Now that we have this data, my hope is that we can use it to open doors and make connections. We have been here since the founding of this country, and we are a significant part of the American experience.”

The website is part of a collaboration between Boston-based American Ancestors, also called the New England Historic Genealogical Society, and the Georgetown Memory Project, which was founded by Georgetown alumnus Richard Cellini.

Through the project, genealogists have discovered 8,425 descendants of enslaved people sold in 1838. Close to half of them remain alive. The site includes a searchable database with genealogies of descendants who have died.

Most of the 314 enslaved people were sent to Louisiana, but about a third remained in Maryland or were sold to other locations, according to an article on the website. The article details how the sold slaves were transported to three Louisiana plantations, where they faced brutal treatment.

“A few priests expressed qualms about the morality of human trafficking to Jesuit authorities, although most were concerned with the threat a heavily Protestant South would undoubtedly present to the slaves’ Catholic faith,” it reads. “In letters written to Jesuit superiors in Maryland, one priest who accidentally crossed paths with the slaves in Louisiana after the sale bemoaned the fact that the slaves couldn’t practice Catholicism.”

In 2017, Georgetown University held a day of remembrance during which the president of the Jesuit order apologized to more than 100 descendants attending a “contrition” liturgy.

On that same day, the university rededicated two buildings previously named for former university presidents who were priests and supporters of the slave trade. One building is now named in honor of a slave who was 65 years old when he was sold in 1838. The second is now named for a free African-American woman who founded a school for Catholic black girls in the Georgetown neighborhood of Washington, D.C.

“Since 2015, Georgetown has been working to address its historical relationship to slavery and will continue to do so,” a Georgetown spokesman said in a statement to Religion News Service on Friday.

“We have committed to finding ways that members of the Georgetown and Descendant communities can be engaged together in efforts that advance racial justice and enable every member of our Georgetown community to confront and engage with Georgetown’s history with slavery.”

Comments are automatically closed two weeks after an article's initial publication. See our comments policy for more.

The latest from america

Pope Leo XIV urged new archbishops to help him foster unity in a church rich in diversity. Eight of those new archbishops are from the United States, and they spoke to Catholic News Service about how they can help promote fraternity in today’s polarized world.
This week on “Jesuitical,” Zac and Ashley chat with Christopher White about his new book, ‘Pope Leo XVI: Inside the Conclave and the Dawn of a New Papacy.’
JesuiticalJune 30, 2025
Kerry Weber, incoming president of the Catholic Media Association, and executive editor of America Magazine, speaks June 26, 2025, during the Catholic Media Conference in Phoenix. (OSV News photo/Bob Roller)
Kerry Weber is an executive editor for America. On May 20, 2025, the Catholic Media Association announced that she was elected president,
Grace LenahanJune 30, 2025
"The whole church needs fraternity, which must be present in all of our relationships, whether between lay people and priests, priests and bishops, bishops and the pope," he said during his homily at Mass on the feast of Sts. Peter and Paul June 29.