Professor brown was a champion of the africanAmerican History of washington, d. C. Its a real thrill for me to be able to honor her work and life in this forum. It was touching and moving to hear your recollections of your grandmother. I cant tell you how happy it that me to hear from you she would approve of and appreciate the work we are doing at georgetown. Thats free much the best introduction ive ever gotten. [laughter] in my life. I really appreciate that. I would 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 on cspan. I just really appreciate your interest in history. Teaching it seems like and learning about history is an uphill battle. We are so focused on the present , we look forward to the future and few of us stop to reflect on the past and where we come from and how it shakes shapes where we are today. History, to think about its impact on our world is truly heartening. College campuses, especially the venerable ones, like georgetown, seeing how venerable it is [laughter] typically presents a well manicured landscape for historical memory. The Old Buildings stand as monuments to the past. Even as the interiors are updated with wifi, glass, and gleaming, shining things. The buildings are usually named after founders whose fame has faded. In truth, few people on campus actually know who they were. Until those founders become infamous and the well manicured landscape of historical memory starts to show signs of blight. I teach history at Georgetown University. Largely in the deep south. Recently, my attention is turned closer to home, in our own backyards, to our own institutions. Last year i had the privilege of the board a member on of the working group on slavery and reclamation. It was for it formed in september of 2015 at the behest , whoe University President asked us to reflect on how georgetown should acknowledge and recognize georgetowns historical relationship with the institution of slavery. Cause of thediate formation of the working group what prompted him to form this party was the reopening of the newly renovated hall. It was named after thomas f mullally, the present the society of jesus. In thishe problem scandal, which is now wellknown. Sale ofstrated the mass more than 200, nearly 300 men, women, and children, in the name of the met maryland jesuits in 1838. He used part of the proceeds of that sale to rescue the college from debt. Say, and rather shocking to understand, that georgetown really owes its the sale of those slaves and 1838. The proceeds of that sale save the college. Saved for college. The president rightly grassed that the present moment was right for the Georgetown Community to have a difficult conversation about this history. He understood the moment for many reasons. One of them was all the roiling on College Campuses last year. The student protests against thattice and indignity were being perpetrated on people of color. But also, he knew the history of georgetown. In theaware of its roots institutions of slavery. , will add that new scholarship like professor craig wilders book, ebony and ivory, have put the issue of slavery at american colleges and universities back in our mental landscape. So, our work builds on the shoulders of many other scholars and activists. That whole community has helped us to do our work. I want to emphasize the georgetowns history of slavery was never a secret. A relatively small group of scholars, alumni, and students, and im one of them, has known about this report for a fairly long time. Theres expert scholarship on the subject. I especially want to applaud the efforts of one of my colleagues, and occur in, now retired. Now retired. He wrote about this sale and the consequences for the college. A long time before the working group got to work. 1990s, our American Studies Program began to teach about georgetown and slavery. Creating a pioneering website called the jesuit plantation project, which published some of the documents in the archive. Student journalists, including one member of the working group, wrote about the slaveholding pass of georgetown in newspapers and periodicals. Say, scooping the Washington Post as they did so. [laughter] all of this, for when the working group began last year, we were surprised to discover how little we and most people knew about the subject and how shocking georgetowns links to slavery where were for most people in the community. Most people simply did not know the history. Failure of that is a of of scholars like myself. Who have 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 underneath the universitys landscape of memory. Seems to me that the first step istruth and reconciliation truth. Excavating this history and publicizing it has become one of our key tasks. Cop is that, weve been digging in the archives at georgetown a cop is that, accomplish that, weve been digging in the archives at georgetown. Right here at the National Archives, which just has extraordinary material on the history of slavery, weve been digging around to find original onuments they can shed light this history. We are trying to make them. Vailable on the website today i would like to walk you through a handful of documents with the roots in american slavery. To introduce you to the central challenges raised by the material. We are gathering of people interested in history. I hope you dont mind if i dwell on the past. Its really what we do. [laughter] soul so, to begin with, im going to go back farther in distant location than you might expect me to. In the early 1600s, 1620s, a jesuit priests named priest named sandoval began to minister to the newly arrived africans in what is today colombia. Sandoval worked at the jesuit lege there new jesuits 150 years before the founding of georgetown. As he met with sick and dying he beganon the docks, to have some doubts about the morality of the system of slavery that he encountered. He began to ask some pesky questions of his colleagues, jesuits around the Atlantic World like whether those africans he was meeting with had been illegally enslaved. Priest named mandau was stationed across the ocean in rwanda, today angola. He wrote sandoval a letter addressing his concerns. A truly remarkable letter that tried to ease sandovals conscience. The letter was included in a massive home published in seville called on restoring ethiopian foundation. About wanted to tell you and i want to thank one of my students for finding this for me [laughter] its good to have students. Dont worry, the father wrote, dose men of good conscience not find slavery reprehensible. Rather, the jesuits by slaves buy slaves without feeling any guilt. It was true, he admitted, no black slave ever said they deserved to be enslaved. But do not ask for their opinions. Can you imagine . He had hoped that this would be to their freedom. So, dont ask them. You will get an answer you dont like. [laughter] he concluded that too many of the souls were saved to abolishto slavery the practice. Sandoval made peace with slavery. His life to saving the souls of the hundred thousand captive africans transported in the first half of the 17th century. Although it took place along way from the founding of georgetown, i mention this correspondence because this correspondence tells ushem because it something important about the intellectual, religious, and social world of atlantic slavery that american jesuits came to inhabit. Slavery and the atlantic slave trade had long been rationalized by christian arguments that soul salvation over earthly freedom. In fact, the Jesuit College in cartagena went so far as to to purchase enslaved africans to aidved as translators missionary efforts. Moreover, the attempt to justify slavery required sandoval and to dismiss,esuits ignore, and ultimately silence their own press protests against enslavement. To listen to them, to take the , would haveeriously threatened the entire enterprise. The jesuits arrived in maryland in 1634. Not long after sandoval published his treaties. Cant say whether they knew about it or not area they probably didnt. But what we do know is that it took decades for slavery to get firmly implanted in maryland. For half a century, indentured servants and tenant farmers supplied the labor needs for the tobacco economy in maryland and in the chesapeake. It was not until the end of the the 16 80s and 16 90s that large numbers of captive africans began to arrive at the colonies and a labor force began to tilt toward slavery. The jesuits, along with other catholics, participated in the great transition from servitude. O slavery it became, in some cases, large slaveowners in the first half of the 18th century. The record you are looking at now dates back to that era. What the university of maryland historian, one of the great historians of american slavery, called the plantation generation of slavery in colonial north america. Now, this is a list of slaves brought from the prince georges to the st. Olony Josephs Mission on the eastern shore. I want to draw your attention to the first name on the list. Nanny. N named manny she is identified here as a 55yearold ginny negro. The names are tantalizing. So much morenow about who these people are. But theres just so little information. Ny, born ins nan africa around 1710. Thats all that we know, its on the page. She is the only enslaved person in the province mentioned in the archives. Who i have come across, so far, 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 the list were born in maryland and baptized with english names like. Om, frank, and lucy like most of those named in the archives, their last names are not recorded. This, i think, are symptoms of what orlando the natalcalls alienation of slavery. The cutting off of people from their ancestry. From the first indications of jazz with slaveholding in maryland, in the 1710s, the jesuit plantation continued to grow across the century. Jesuits taken by counted nearly 200 slaves on the plantations. They were primarily located in Southern Maryland, in st. Marys county and charles county. There are also missions and plantations in the north on the eastern shore. The suppression of affiliates in the 1770s of the jesuits in the 1770s stewart did the property into place. Ofluding the incorporation Roman Catholic clergyman. Georgetown college was founded to advance Catholic Education in the United States in 1789. 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 rest on the foundation of a slave economy. Now, the jesuits and their catholic congregants were not the only people in maryland to draw inspiration from the ideals of the american revolution. Prove thatas to there was a place for catholics in the new republic that georgetown was founded. It seems that the jesuits owned slaves and that also drew inspiration from the ideals of the american revolution, thinking that the principles of , articulatedlity 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, the mahoneys, the queens, took their owners to court. In some cases, they were successful. One of these freedom seekers was a name a man named edward this queen, who filed complaint against reverend john ,shton of the Western Shores 1791. Can read theif you handwriting from where you are sitting in this petition. I assure you, this is one of the more legible documents we have encountered. Should add that this document comes from a wonderful website the university of nebraska professor, william , about these various freedom suits in the early republic. So, this is an example of the kind of collaboration and scholarship of other people that we benefit 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 loves his grandmother what was his grandmother. Much like the captives in cartagena, she claimed to have been illegally enslaved. But in this case he was heard and he won his case in the courts in 1794. Member of what was called the revolutionary generation of american slaves. Hes also part of this moment of transition in the chesapeake, post, after the american revolution. When there is 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 begins to expand tremendously. That one of the pioneering historians in the region was [indiscernible] but its worth noting that in , onting queen his freedom the relatively narrow ground of his freeborn grandmother and in theremind you that law of slavery, in maryland and other places in the americas the children of enslaved women were also slaves. Status followed the mother. Not only did the status follow the mother not only were the children of slave mothers be slaves but they would be owned by their mothers honor. Ut if owner but if the mother is free, you have the right to be free as well. Of his claimbasis to freedom. But in granting it on this relatively narrow ground, the affirmedo implicitly the enslavement of thousands of other enslaved people who could not establish their birthright. N court so, you can see here that this is a power that be in society, trying to make up rules by which slavery would be governed. And a Legal Institution that operates under certain rules. Reverend ashton, for his part, was a jesuit station for many years at the whitemarsh station. Listed in the census with 82 slaves next to his names. One of the biggest in the region. He also happened to be a founder for the cooperate corporation of Roman Catholic clergyman and one of the first directors of Georgetown College. Remarkable how many connections to slavery turn up in the early records of the college itself. , whichst college ledgers record the students coming into roomollege and paying for and board, those expenses, it hurts the hiring of slaves. For 10 pounds per year from 1792 to 1797. Its not just ownership, but also the hiring and renting of slaves. Father john mcelroy, whose journals record the daily life thehe college, noted presence of 13 colored persons, as he described them in his journal. At the collegele were slaves. Who they were or what they did he failed to mention. Journalter entry in his cited a man called billy the blacksmith, probably a slave, buried in the College Graveyard in a ceremony attended by many students. Holy trinity church, next to georgetown, the sacrament of registers record slaves getting baptized, married, right next door to campus. William gaston, georgetowns manyimed First Student of our grand lectures and occasions are held in the hall there he became that he came from a wealthy slaveowning 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 that in another, free people of color could be citizens of his state. Those two were remarkably progressive for North Carolina, 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 normative order of society. The people at georgetown, the faculty, the presence of the people there, they are routinely buying and selling slaves, hiring of slaves but what does that say to everybody else . Says that this is a perfectly reasonable, perfectly normal, institution. Al you cannot underestimate the etiological effect of the participation of a place like georgetown or the jesuit order in slaveholding. Once laid a georgetown in these early years was a man named isaac, who ran away from the ,ollege during the war of 1812 in january of 1814. In themcelroy advertised washington newspaper, as you can see here. A runaway slave add, of which there are thousands and in the american newspapers. This one happens to be posted by a jesuit who was working at Georgetown College. Reward for the return of isaac, who ran away from Georgetown College on saturday night. , likeo man named isaac black complexion, five feet eight inches high. Giving a physical description of isaac, telling the readers what he was wearing when he fled, speculating that he had a change of clothing with him. He also noted that he could read that alloweda pass him to move freely throughout the countryside. They guess that he might be on his way to pennsylvania, a freer state in 1814 in maryland. If isaacstand, even had gotten there, that would not have made him free. Under the fugitive slave clause, he was still bound to service and could be returned to the college. Very runaway ads are onesided. We only get the perspective of the owner and in most cases you have no idea of what actually happened. But in this case, the journal actually fills in some of the details. Turns out he was captured and thrown in jail in baltimore. And one of mcelroys colleagues sold him as punishment. There wasnt much mercy shown to isaac. Concluded,r of 1812 the jesuits began to wrestle with the problem of slavery. But they did not necessarily wrestle with it in an abolitionist way. The way that weve might want or expect them to the way that we might want or expect them to wrestle with it. A jesuit rather wrote a letter to the president of georgetown in 1815 to propose getting rid of the slaves. Either by selling off for freeing them. It is better to sell for a time or set your people free, he wrote. These were his reasons. First, because we have their souls to answer for. Second, because blacks are more difficult to govern now than formerly. He may have had isaac and edward queen in mind. Because we shall make more and more, to our satisfaction. What follows is a careful comparison of the cost of slave labor with the cost of hiring white laborers. The conclusion was that the shift to free white workers would provide substantial savings to the jesuits. For the next 20 years, they grappled over whether to sell their human property. To free them or simply maintain the status quo. Jesuit proposed freeing them and sending them to liberia, the newly created haven for former slaves in west africa, championed by the american founded inn society the neighborhood of georgetown. The jesuit plantations were increasingly becoming unprofitable. Slavery was coming under a moral rising movement. Georgetown itself had fallen on hard times. Saddling the college with debt. One of the leaders, who had served georgetown for much of the 1840s, made the decision to tof sell the slaves catholic landowners. Henry johnson had been the governor of louisiana, so this is not an insignificant person. They agreed to sell the slaves to johnson and baby for 118,000. Depending on how you count, that is about a minimum of 3 million today. They made sure to sell to catholic owners, so as not to portray betray their religious obligation to care for the souls of the slaves. In fact, that was one of the conditions put on the sale. But, they did not ask the slaves whether they would like to be , which wasisiana notorious to black people in the upper south for being a death sentence. I should say that some of these documents can be very tough to take. I think its important to confront directly the evidence of slavery. I do recognize that they can be very difficult to look at. Out that the 1838 sale is one of the most richly documented mass sales of slaves in American History. A window intofer the domestic slave trade. The uprooting and transplantation of virtually an entire Slave Community from the upper south of the deep south. Historians estimate that roughly one million slaves, one 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, tracking hundreds of miles. Others were ordered onto steamboats and literally sold on the river. They went by a coastal route. On ang from the chesapeake voyage that took a week or two. Possibly the second Middle Passage. Not hard to read your head around a number like a million. Its a big number. It in anly think about abstract way. I think its the story of , families and communities, that allow us to grasp the trauma of that second Middle Passage on a human scale. This 1838 skit sale is documented in several ways. A contract was signed, green to sell 272 men, women, and children, named in the articles of agreement. The terms of the sale were laid out as well. Financial transaction. Year, they parceled out the slaves to beatty and johnson. Three additional bills of sale identify the people to be sold. O johnson and beatty there were still other transactions. Some of the slaves were married to slaves of nonjesuits. The jesuits were under orders from rome not to separate families. So, what to do about this situation . They appear to have sold some of their own slaves to the owners ,f their slaves spouses purchasing other spouses to send with their own slaves to louisiana. Were still piecing that part together. Sale, the jesuits took a census of the 272 slaves who were slated to be sold, identifying them by family groups in the plantations where they lived. New towns, whitemarsh, st. Thomas manner. Sale isticular bill of to jesse beatty. If you can see this is actually a very legible script you can see that while most of the people listed in the , atract were my first main few last names were included, such as the first on this contract, mace butler 50. Ears of age bibby, 45, his wife. The names that follow ne, mary, martha an john lewis, rose, those are all the children. Descendent, a woman whoatricia johnson has a real talent for genealogy who first discovered her own Family History in these records more than a decade ago. The work that Patricia Johnson did, tracking her own family , has been a real inspiration and source of of us at for those georgetown, working on this history. The 1838 sale involved families who had been formed over multiple generations. They had been in maryland for a long time. Andthey were being uprooted sent to a strange, distant place. Another very important document, tracing the movement of the maryland jesuit slaves from the , isapeake to the deep south this document. It is the top of a manifest from the captain jackson, which sailed from alexandria to new orleans in 1838, carrying many of the maryland jesuit slaves on board. The original manuscript is currently located in fort worth. I want to take this opportunity to thank the archivists there, who are 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. I have heard a lot over the last year about how great the jesuit recordkeeping was. And im here to tell you, it wasnt that great. They could have done a better job on a number of things. But one of the things thats really builtin is a failure to record the last names of the slaves. We know they had them, from subsequent manifests, but those last names in those cases will not appear in the records. Diggs,y include ulnar, hawkins, merrick, clean cap queen, scott, and many others. Area mayyou from the recognize those names as common names in this region. Common names among africanamericans. Because the community was divided. There were people who were slaves and people who were free who shared these names and histories. But the sale, in 1838, picks up and pulls it out of that context. Popping them down in louisiana. Now, in many cases, in the history of the domestic slave difficult, ifry not entirely impossible, to trade 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, a lot of them have been digitized go on ancestry. Com and you can search figuring out what happened to them once they got off these boats is tough to do. That is one of the reasons why the georgetown 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 of them ended up on Henry Johnsons chatham plantation while others ended up on jesse beattys west oak plantation. So we know where they ended up. Moreover, we know the experience of being bought and sold continued in louisiana of to the civil war. In 38 was not the last time these people were sold. Henry johnson felt into Financial Difficulties shortly after purchasing all of these slaves. He had to renegotiate the terms in the 1840se and 1850s. That money is sloshing around jesuit and georgetown coffers for decades. Ultimately, Henry Johnson sold his plantation i believe in the 1850s im not making this up his name was John Thompson. [laughter] i dont think any relation. The beatty slaves were sold at least two more times as the plantation past to his heirs when he died in the 1850s. They sold it to the barrow family in 1853. In the arrows the barrows sold it to the will folks. On the eve emancipation, a portion of the jesuit Slave Community was in the position of a woman named Emily Woolfolk in louisiana. Emily woolfolk 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. Childrenhem and their. Ppear in 1870 census once you can find people in the 1870 census, it becomes much easier to trace them through the standard method of genealogy. Africanamericans who are trying to trace back to the days of slavery, 1870 becomes a brick wall. Because the census did not identify enslaved people by name, just their owners. There are these slave schedules census1870 and 1860 where you count the number slaves owned by a donor. The slaves are only by each. Wner the slaves are only mentioned by number, not by name. So you have to go to records, baptismal rest guards baptismal records if they exist, back to the age of slavery. These are the kind of records the made it possible for descendents of the maryland jesuit Slave Community to be. Iscovered and for them to come to know their own history as it had been happening for the past several months. But this particular document you are looking at now i apologize for that this is definitely unreadable to all of us. Scan offrom a digital the microfilm of documents here at the National Archives in the Freedmens Bureau records, which are one of the most extraordinary sets of records in all of American History documenting that moment, that process of emancipation. Lookingocument you are at is a payroll records filed with the Freedmens Bureau in louisiana at the end of 1865. Record forayroll newly freed people on the west oak plantation in iver will perish. These people of were members of the maryland jesuit Slave Community. And their children. But they are no longer slaves here. I rfra reported they are in fact reported as freed men. This record actually records that ages for the year 18 city five. They are now getting paid for their work. This is an image of what freedom looks like it. That . Ee were i will not all of the ages would slaves not all of the jesuit slaves were sold. Senses census shows a parish headed by luisa mason, corporation by the of catholic religion iclergyman. Students from slaveowning families continue to attend georgetown. Colleges southern orientation explained why the majority of georgetown students and alumni who fought in the civil war fought for guess which side. Confederacy. They live they fall for the shortlived nation whose cornerstone was slavery. It wasnt until after the war that georgetowns slavery got buried in the landscape of memory. And give you two examples of this. One is in the career of the man on the left. Reverend Patrick Healy of the society of jesus in known as georgetowns second founder. He served as president of to 1882. N from 1872 several new build buildings on campus. Healy was born into slavery. He was the son of an irish cotton planter in georgia and a slave woman. Recognized his. Aternity healy was sent to a Catholic School in the north and ultimately entered the jesuit order, where he rose to promise in the position at georgetown. But essentially he passed for white. The jesuits had to conceal his ancestry from the public. His ancestry was not discovered and made public until scholars figured it out in the 1950s, upon which time healy was claimed as the first africanamerican president [laughter] of a predominately white university. Time or very few people at the time knew that he was not white. This burialso see of the history of slavery in georgetowns school colors, the blue and the great. The blue and the gray. Those colors were chosen by georgetowns crew team in 1876, the year that marked the end of reconstruction. They chose those colors as a sign of sectional reconciliation between northern and southern students. On the Georgetown University library webpage. This is georgetown alma mater that was written for the unveilingf the 1876 of the colors. Today, these are our colors. Im wearing blue and right now. Know that sectional reconciliation, the union of blue and gray after the civil expense ofed at the the rights of africanamericans. And the memory of the politics of slavery. So white students from the north and the south could only reconcile with each other if they offer got about the problem with slavery. Which is why they were fighting in the first place. The first black undergraduate and georgetown was not admitted until 1950. His name was santa halsey junior. 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 owes its existence to slave labor. Compared to that reality, heelys and perceptible blackness is little consolation. Proposal is, going forward, georgetown color should be blue, gray, black. [laughter] so what now . Where do we go from here . Isking through the archives concluding. We walked we worked on uncovering this history, building the slavery archives, getting the story out to the Georgetown Community, hearing from members of the community about what it meant to them, gathered knowledge from scholars of slavery and emancipation and african American History about what all this meant, including professor wilder from m. I. T. We gathered all the knowledge and what do we do to come to terms with this history . We wrote up a report, a working group composed of students and faculty ands laugh and alumni and staff and alumni. We came up with a report. This is the report, an elegant little document that is available on Georgetown Universitys slavery memory and reconciliation website. The historymuch of and provides a series of recommendations and rationales for how we should proceed. It suggests that we remake that landscape of memory on campus, in part by renaming quality and mulliganl mcsherry hall. Students protested in the hall and georgetown change the name at that time to freemen remembrance hall until we could come up with something better. Suggested thatup Mulligan Hall be named after an enslaved man named isaac, who was the first person listed in the articles of agreement. The maryland jesuit Slave Community that was sacrificed to save georgetown. We know isaac was the patriarch of the hopkins family, multiple generations who were sold and transported to louisiana. So we know something about isaac. The second building we recommended to be named after a truly remarkable woman named and review craft. Africanamerican woman who in the 18 20s and 1830s. She 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. Ut she ought to be remembered one of the great African American historians of the 19th century called her one of the most remarkable people to live in the city. So we should remember her. If we want to do that, if we tot to create a memorial slavery at georgetown that will be an enduring monument to that history, we want to create historical times around the around the campus so that this history is no longer buried. Archive,his incredible which scholars and the public can use to work through so many different aspects in the history of slavery. The georgetowns story is a microcosm of the whole history of slavery and emancipation in the United States. As we can see through one community. Recommendedgroup descendents of the maryland jesuit Slave Community, though sent to louisiana and those who remained behind. The worke main joy of we having gauged in is to get to know these people to help them recover their family histories, to hear their perspectives on. Hat this history means to them weve had some people, some groups come to georgetown. Ive been with them in the special collections where they look at these documents in person and find the name of their ancestors. And that for me has been a experience. Kable for a long time im an academic. I write about things that happened a long time ago. And for me, what this is done, it has collapsed the distance between the past and the present and make it all the more meaningful. Was of the recommendations an institutional for having participated in this inhumane institution. Apologies and not be enough. But if you back them up 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 our own search out moral blind spots. What are we failing to recognize today in the way the university conducts its business in the way we conduct our business in what ways are we repeating the of the leadership of georgetown 150 years ago . Not exactly the same, but our own mistakes that have come out of the failure of moral imagination. And especially with respect to the enduring legacies of slavery and racist discrimination today. Race is a man racist forms of injustice in our own backyard racism and racist forms of injustice in our own backyard. Me, 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 descendents, from the public, from all of you just showing up here today, listening to may ramble through this history. I think what it shows, what can show, lee is a history is that history really does matter. Thank you for listening. [applause] good afternoon. Id like to thank you for the work youve done on this project. Ive been doing a lot of reading the trauma says that of slavery is in the dna of africanamericans today. And id like to acknowledge that tonight. I would also like to say that u. S. Cow this information can be known. That you ask how this information can be known. I suggest, with the elections upon us, there is information that we still dont know. How was it to you is for you working on this project will kind of feelings did you experience during the research. Adam thank you for that question. Feelings and of emotions as i engaged in this work. A sense of terror, that was born out of a real desire to get this history right , especially as it became more and more of a public kind of enterprise. The New York Times was starting to write about it. I recognized that there were people looking very closely at the work that we were doing. That puts a lot of pressure on you as a scholar. You just really want to get it right. So that was part of it. Just curiosity is another. I think curiosity is an important quality for any historian or any feeling, thinking person to have. How do i make sense of this . That the possible jesuit leaders of georgetown could baptize their slaves one day and sell them the next . How do you make sense of that apparent paradox . So there is a kind of curiosity to know how did this happen . What was going through their heads . And an even greater curiosity is what was it meant for the slaves and selves . You get to their perspective, which is so hidden in the records . One of the reason why its so amazing to get to the descendents. Because they have Family History. They have family lore, especially those who remained in maryland. They always knew their families connection to the jesuits. Their families continue to have connection with the jesuits after masturbation. After emancipation. That is not so much in the records. Thating able to look at was really this heartening and very gratifying. So all of those were part of the emotions i felt as a scholar pursuing this history. I am a prospective student. Like to ask if the slaves worked as domestic slaves and if the jesuits [indiscernible] society. Gton in the slaves in the maryland Jesuit Community and the college performed a wide range of labor. Out on the plantations, they performed agricultural work. But there were also artisans, andenters and blacksmiths managers of those plantations actually hired out their labor to their neighbors. It wasnt so much that the college rented it slaves out to georgetown. Georgetown neighbors rented their slaves to the college. Also that relationship to the college and the neighborhood around georgetown. This is not part of that story, but, if any of you dont know the story of a man name your men loot, who lived in the neighborhood of georgetown, just blocks away from the college, it is an incredible story. He was born in africa, transported his slave trade to the chesapeake, lived in the neighborhood of georgetown. He was a brick maker and actually managed to make enough money as a brick maker to purchase his own freedom. So he lived as a free person making bricks, loaning money to neighbors in georgetown. He was renowned as a devout muslim. Muslims have been around for a long time in this country. Add his portrait was actually painted more than once. And his portrait was actually painted more than once. He is one of the faces of the Africanamerican Community in georgetown. It is a remarkable story. There are so many stories. Stories that we still have to tell. That one has been told. I went to georgetown. I graduated in 1962. I slept in healy hall and ive been to caston hall. When i went to georgetown, everybody had to take large amounts of philosophy. And i can remember my senior had five times a week, we had ethics. [laughter] and im trying to there is a certain incongruence i see here. [laughter] wondering does the georgetown Ethics Department now [laughter] look at this situation and discuss it . Does the University Talk we had to take ethics because we were going to be ethical people. Not seemniversity does like it has behaved ethically. Adam it didnt. But one of our 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. 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 in this history. That think across university community, people are talking about it. Not just job is in the park. But across the university. 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 sharing your research. I have two quick questions. About johnjumped thompson being one of the slaveowners, but i wonder if John Thompson the coach has commented on this at all . Also, historically, the georgetown neighborhood has had a large africanamerican population. I wonder if the community over the years even recognizes this history while the university itself might have been highest been biased . I do know what coach knows about this. I know the coach thompson was at gaston hall december 1. I know the students on the team are very aware of this history. As all the students i georgetown now are. One person was very involved in the book project called blood black georgetown remembered. 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 it is something that we can all are. All learn. Considering that for 40 years of the period you covered, jesus did not exist per se. But in the document of mr. Was sent byion, it what looked to be a priest. I have no fear was that the scope catholic would he be a jesuit . I imagine he was a good friend of mr. Ashton afterwards. It looks like it might be latin. Preston county family. Given the rows of obedience to roman to baltimore, what do we know about their conflicts . 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 may conclude. So what do we know about priests who found themselves in the opposite side of the establishment . Adam great, thank you. The request is here is reverend reverend thomas briggs. Reverend ashton could then a bit of an oddball and an outcast from his fellow jesuits. As far as i know, there is no building in georgetown named after ashton. He seems to have been buried in memory as well. I dont know exactly what was going on with reverend diggs and. And ashton. Theres been some scholarship on them. The key family, for instance, was very involved as lawyers on behalf of the slaves. So that is 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 it. Nsions to the americanborn jesuits seem to be more comfortable with slavery than the european joseph european jesuits. Were those who did not think the slaves should be sold, but did not think they should be freed either. They felt that the jesuits had the responsibility to be the stewards of the souls of their slaves, and that meant keeping them as slaves. But there were other jesuits who did champion schemes for emancipation. Joseph carver is known to have proposed a scheme of gradual emancipation over years that would have turned the slave into free tenant farmers on the property of the jesuits. Thomas muller the is called back becauseafter the sale the Church Leadership was pretty unhappy with what he did. Mostly because it was discovered that he uses the proceeds of the sale to pay off the debt of the college, which is something explicitly rome said he should not do. He is rehabilitated, i guess, and sent that to the states where he then founds holy cross, i believe, yeah. There are no public protests against the sale within the Jesuit Community per se. I appreciate your desire to get it right. With that said, you stated that one of the objectives of the georgetown memory project is outreach. To descendents and outreach to descendents. Ive read some articles, New York Times, Washington Post, and there are statements at the end of the article saying, if you believe to be among the descendents, please contact them. I want to know what means the university is quick to initiate the contact. The sale has been known but the known. As not been aside from academicians knowing and other people in this committee, the actual descendents of the maryland jesuit Slave Community, what is the university doing to reach out to them . Adam well, part of a few things. Maybe not everything we should be doing, but a few things. By creating these websites, the georgetown slavery archives and the georgetown memory website, that is an opportunity for people to contact us. So weve gotten a lot of inquiries from people wanting to know if they have if they are descendents, how to find that out, that sort of thing. So i think these websites have. Een part of that outreach events like this and talk to journalists in different places, Southern Maryland, louisiana, that might reach that public, just trying to get the story out there so more more people who think they might have some intuition, some sense of Family History that they might be connected can reach out to us. Separate entity called the georgetown memory project, which is independent from what the university is doing. That was set up by our alumnus richard cellini. Theyve been doing a lot of research. Cellini has reached out to some of the descendents to tell them about this connection. So he is continuing his work. We are collaborating with them, trying to put out more and more documents that can help people trace these histories. So that is basically what we are doing. Thank you. Adam if anybody is watching out there, on youtube or cspan, if you recognize if your name is one of the last names that i have man mentioned or you see documents, if you are from one of the counties in Southern Maryland or one of the parishes 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. We can help you find that out. Really excellent scholarship. Thank you very much. Do with howhas to easy or hard was it as an archivist going through these records . If somebody at the university of separate sethas a of Scholarly Research is going on in maryland and georgetown now, how easy or difficult has it been to collect this information . It seems like youve had to go quite far field to find these documents. Thank you. Adam you asked a question that is near and dear to my heart good youre asking a historian what their sources. [laughter] wow. The sun shines down. Inch ist place is in georgetown zone archives. When hundred 30 boxes of material. 130 boxes of material. It is a lot of stuff. Luckily, we are finding excellent scholarship that cites sources. Even just going through the material at georgetown is a pretty big endeavor. And luckily, there is a bunch of us students in the History Department and archivists in the library who are combing through that stuff. But thats not where everything is. I think ive shown you a bit where some of that other stuff is. Weve used material here at the National Archives, the ship manifest, the Student Bureau records. Thet of the material is in archives in louisiana, else . Ouses where courthouses we just tried to cast a wide net. Every time you smelly potential sourcel, youve got to go chase it down. Were just beginning. And i think we are just scratching the surface on all the sources that are really available to research this history. We really havent gotten into the post were period and what happened to these families afterwards. So it is a big project that requires a lot of partners and a lot of different places. To me, that has been one of the it, interesting parts to chasing down these sources and finding partners that can help the documentry and archive is never sufficient. We have to supplement what has been written down with things like the oral history of descendent families. Things that will never appear in archives and give us a perspective that we will never get in another way. So we have to come on the documentary record with other s of getting at historical thee have to complement documentary record with other ways of getting historical information. Am an archaeologist for washington, d. C. I am 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 thevoiceless, through material remains they left behind. Thats not what i came appear to say. I was one of the founding for s of the search [applause] there is a session on saturday at 3 15. Im sure you will all be there. [laughter] one of the outcomes of the project is the team is working named scholar who is mohammed alma dolman. N you talk about the mohammed is working on the islamic archives and morocco. He has encountered a similar parallel explanation or rationalization for slavery there. And he is looking at letters from enslaved africans who were brought over here and were literate in arabic and wrote back to the caliphate, asking for relief from slavery. And 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. Thene wants to start buying freedom of these 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 digging onresult of a vacant property in georgetown. Thank you. [applause] adam you never quite know where history will take you. That was a last question. So thank you so much. [applause] [captioning performed by the national captioning institute, which is responsible for its caption content and accuracy. Visit ncicap. Org] [captions Copyright National cable satellite corp. 2016] on the morning of december 7, 1941, japanese planes attacked the u. S. Fleet at pearl harbor. American history tv marks the 75th anniversary of the surprise 10,ck on saturday, december beginning at 8 00 a. M. Eastern. We will show archival films, firstperson accounts from veterans and civilians, and the ceremony atsary pearl harbor and at the world war ii memorial in washington. And we will take your calls, saturday, december 10, starting at 8 00 a. M. Here on history tv only on cspan 3. This year, cspans touring