Georgetown University and Jesuit Order Donate $27 Million in Compensation for Sale of Slaves in 1838

The famous university and the Jesuit order committed to this payment in compensation for a sale of slaves which took place in 1838, and which had then saved it from going bankrupt.

In 1838, Georgetown University in Washington DC was drowning in debt and in danger of closing permanently. The Jesuit order, managing this Catholic faculty created in the aftermath of the American Revolution, then decided to sell 272 of their slaves to plantations in the south of the country. The money from the sale helped ensure the future of the university, today one of the best and most selective in the country. For a long time, the university administration and the Jesuit order refused to confront this racist past, and the story of the sale was even lost until 2004. The university finally officially apologized in 2017.

This Wednesday, September 13, the university and the American Jesuit order pledged to donate $27 million to the Descendants Truth and Reconciliation association, which fights to reduce the harmful and lasting effects of slavery on the descendants of the 272 enslaved people sold in 1838. The university will donate $10 million to the association, and the Jesuits 17 million, in the form of financial donations and land from former plantations.

An example of “racial healing”

The Descendants Truth and Reconciliation Foundation association was created in 2019 by descendants of slaves sold during the sale, but also by the American Jesuit order. It ultimately hopes for an investment of at least a billion dollars and has three main objectives: to finance the education of African-American people descended from slaves of the same sale, to care for older descendants and to financially support anti-racist programs. . Members of Descendants also hope to present an example of what “racial healing,” as they call it, could look like for the United States.

In a statement released by the Jesuit order after the donation was announced, Joseph Stewart, one of the founders of Descendants, praised “commitments such as this that bring us closer to reconciliation with the original sin of this country and to cure the disease of racism in our nation.”

The president of Georgetown University said that “it is an honor for our university to have the opportunity to contribute to the efforts [de l’association]. The difficult truths of our past guide us in the urgent work of seeking and supporting the work of reconciliation in our present and future. Father Tim Kesicki, president of the American and Canadian Jesuit Conference, considers it imperative that the Church does not “turn away from its immoral history of slavery and that we reflect on how we can repair the mistakes of the past.”

Controversial repairs

The payment of reparations to African-American descendants of slaves is a hotly debated subject across the Atlantic. The negative effects of slavery and subsequent segregation are still felt by the African American population today. According to a 2016 Federal Reserve study, African-American families have on average ten times less capital than white families, in part because of the lack of generational wealth that the community, for a long time, did not have. had the opportunity to create himself. For these populations, reparations would be a means of finally being able to build this capital.

Calls for reparations for the black community have been made regularly since at least the end of the Civil War, which made slavery illegal throughout the country in 1865. It has been brought back into fashion in recent years, particularly since the beginning of the Black Lives Matter movement in 2013. In 1989, Democratic Representative John Conyers introduced a bill in Congress to create a commission to study avenues for reparations. Nearly thirty years later, in April 2021, this proposal passed the parliamentary committee stage for the first time, but the law was never adopted.

Several cities and states have announced their intentions to set up a system of reparations. In June 2021, eleven U.S. city mayors announced the “Mayors Organized for Reparations and Equity” (MORE) initiative, which aims to establish programs in African American communities as reparations. In California, a working group was created in 2020 to establish a roadmap to compensate the descendants of the approximately 4,000 slaves who lived in the state. The group released its report in June 2023, recommending in particular payments for anyone who can prove descent from a California slave, the amount of which must be determined by the State Assembly, as well as tax credits and Free tuition at California universities.

However, the very principle of reparations remains very controversial. According to a survey published last week by the University of Berkeleya majority of California voters are against the idea of ​​paying money to the descendants of California slaves, despite the fact that 60% of the state’s population agrees that the United States’ slavery past continues to exist. impact African-American populations.

2023-09-16 14:04:00


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