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 prop