Story at a glance
- Georgetown used the funds from the sale of 272 enslaved people to stay financially afloat in 1838.
- A new fund of $400,000 per year will address the education, health and housing needs of the community of descendants of those 272 people.
- An earlier policy gave the descendants “legacy” status in university admissions, but failed to consider real barriers still facing the descendants.
In 1838, Jesuits at Georgetown University sold 272 enslaved people to offset their financial troubles. Now, after pressure from student advocates, the university has announced plans to raise a fund of $400,000 per year to address the education, health and housing needs of those descendants, who are known as the GU272.
Other American universities have made efforts to face their history with slavery, but this fund would be only the third example of a major institution making reparations for slavery, The New York Times reports, after the Virginia Theological Seminary and the Society of the Sacred Heart. Georgetown had already changed its policies to consider descendants of the 272 as legacy applicants, ostensibly to make a Georgetown education more accessible to them. However, when student journalists from the school’s newspaper, The Hoya, visited a town in Louisiana where many descendants still live, they found the policy change was not mindful of the community’s actual needs.
Shepard Thomas, a descendant of the GU272 who now attends Georgetown, wrote for The Hoya about the trip: “The people of Maringouin have so many educational and financial obstacles to surmount before they can even consider going to college.” Notably, the town’s nearest high school is 58 miles away.
“Even a local secondary school would be more beneficial to descendants in this area than legacy status,” Thomas wrote.
Six months ago, students approved a nonbinding referendum to raise funds for the GU272 community through increased student fees. The $400,000-per-year plan, announced Oct. 30, seeks to address the same issues as the students’ plan without raising fees. Instead, they will raise the money through donations from alumni, faculty, students and philanthropists, starting in 2020.
“We embrace the spirit of this student proposal,” John J. DeGioia, Georgetown’s president, wrote in a letter to the university community, adding that the fund is one step toward answering the question, “How do we address now, in this moment, the enduring and persistent legacies of slavery?”
Thomas worries that the plan will still leave the descendants without the support they need.
“That isn’t sufficient,” he told the Times.
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