Lee Hawkins on the history of Georgetown University's involvement in slavery
Georgetown University made headlines back in 2017 when officials at the Washington, D.C. university revealed that it had been involved in slavery. Research shows the college relied on Jesuit plantations in Maryland to help finance its operations. In 1838 more than 270 slaves were sold to keep the school afloat. Some of the descendants of those slaves live here in Minnesota.
Lee Hawkins is a journalist, musician and special correspondent for American Public Media. He found out that there’s a lot more to this story than Georgetown originally said. He joined host Cathy Wurzer to talk about what happened and what descendants want to see happen next.
Use the audio player above to listen to the full conversation.
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Audio transcript
CATHY WURZER: Let's turn our attention next to a national story with a Minnesota connection. Georgetown University made headlines back in 2017 when officials at the Washington DC University revealed that it had been involved in slavery. Research shows the college relied on Jesuit plantations in Maryland to help finance its operations. And in 1838, more than 270 slaves were sold to keep the school afloat. Some of the descendants of those slaves live here in Minnesota.
American Public Media special correspondent Lee Hawkins found out there's a lot more to this story than Georgetown originally said. And he's here with me now to talk about what happened and what descendants want to see happen next. Welcome back, Lee. How are you?
LEE HAWKINS: Hi, Cathy. Thank you. I'm great, thanks.
CATHY WURZER: I'm glad you're here. This is a very interesting story. So let's start back in 2017. That's when all this came to light. I want to know who were these individuals? What do we know about them?
LEE HAWKINS: Well, Cathy, the Georgetown University that we know today was founded by the Society of Jesus, the Maryland Jesuits to be exact. Jesuit leaders held a ceremony in which they apologized for selling 272 enslaved people to three Louisiana plantations recently, and that was to keep the failing college from going out of business. The public apology made by both the Jesuits and Georgetown was made on camera directly to the small group of descendants who had been identified at that point, and their apology was reported by dozens of major news outlets.
CATHY WURZER: Mm-hmm. Now you found that the university was much more involved in slavery than that.
LEE HAWKINS: Exactly. And what the Jesuits in Georgetown did not detail in that public apology is that Georgetown didn't just sell 272 people in 1838 to stay in business. Georgetown was founded and funded primarily through the revenues and business model of slavery, which means it would not have even existed without the Jesuits extracting and exploiting centuries of free labor from Black enslaved people.
So according to the slavery archives at Georgetown, the Jesuits arrived in North America in 1634, and by 1700, they'd purchased slaves and established six tobacco plantations in Southern Maryland. Over the next century and a half, Cathy, the Jesuits enslaved not 272 people, but about 1,100 people. And they worked those people and saved up money, and they used the revenues derived from their free labor to capitalize Georgetown College in the late 1700s and to found dozens of other Jesuit colleges and high schools, including the College of Holy Cross and Loyola University Maryland and Georgetown Prep, the school attended by people like to Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh.
So Cathy, this is something that Loyola University of Maryland only recently discovered, and it's very possible that there are other universes that have similar history and for some reason were never told by the Jesuits or are just not aware. And up to this point, it's mainly known by certain academics who study Jesuit history.
CATHY WURZER: What somber history it is too. Now, I'm very interested in what you found out. You tracked down a Minnesota family connected to this story.
LEE HAWKINS: Yes, I did. His name is Mr. Elton Wright Trusclair, and I found him through a Georgetown alumnus named Richard Cellini, and here's how he found them. In 2015, Georgetown formed a committee to research its slavery past and make recommendations to its president about how to atone for it. The next year they came back with a report, Mr. Cellini read it and emailed a committee member and asked if the people sold in 1838 had any living descendants, and he was told that all of them died as a result of some kind of swamp fever that they caught in Louisiana.
Well, frankly, he didn't believe that story, so he did a simple Google search, and he found out about descendants through an article that was written by a woman who happened to be the cousin of Elton Wright Trusclair, the man featured in my story. And that week, Mr. Cellini invested $50,000 of his own money to hire a genealogist to search for the descendants. And just in a matter of a month, they found 100 people, and that number of descendants is now more than 10,000, Cathy.
CATHY WURZER: Wow. OK, so the Minnesota connection is that there are people from the Twin Cities such as Mr. Wright Trusclair who are descendants of the folks who Georgetown sold back in 1838. I am really curious as to what they're saying about all this.
LEE HAWKINS: Yeah, and that's what makes it so interesting. A little before that apology ceremony, some of the people from descendant families wrote a letter to top Jesuit officials in Rome, and they asked them to set up a fund that would pay out $1 billion in restitution to the descendants of the families who they enslaved, and the Jesuits would not agree to that. Instead, they got together with a smaller group recently of descendants and they agreed with those descendants to raise $100 million.
And if they're successful in raising that money, it would then be put into a foundation to support educational scholarships for the families and also the nonprofit initiatives of many sort of Black community efforts. And many descendants have said that if the public knew that Georgetown had so many of these Jesuit schools were largely capitalized by slavery, people would agree that $1 billion in a payout to families who were impacted is much fairer than a commitment to raise $100 million for scholarships and charitable initiatives for the Black community at large.
And Richard Cellini says, a critical point here is that many Jesuit universities wouldn't exist without Black enslaved people. In fact, he calls Georgetown the largest historically Black college in America, facetiously of course. And here's something that he had to say.
RICHARD CELLINI: The university-- Georgetown University-- was primarily funded through the revenue and profits generated by these five slave plantations. So you see that the slavery wasn't just sort of an incidental, accidental occurrence that occurred somewhere in Georgetown's past or the past of the Maryland Jesuits.
Slavery was the business model. It was the primary revenue mechanism for at least 230 years for powering everything that the Maryland Jesuits did in North America. And for 50 years before Georgetown was founded to fund the founding of the university and then the next 50 years of Georgetown's first years of existence. Again, all paid primarily with revenues and profits produced by five slave plantations owned by the Maryland Jesuits in Southern Maryland.
CATHY WURZER: Wow. OK, now, Lee, you said earlier that Georgetown is not the only institution with strong ties to slavery. What other kinds of institutions have had those ties?
LEE HAWKINS: Well, there are more colleges, Cathy, after years of colleges and universities remaining silent about their ties to slavery. There was a consortium launched in 2014 called Universities Studying Slavery, and the list of universities involved is a who's who of American institutions that includes Harvard and Brown, to the University of Alabama and dozens of others who say they're beginning to investigate their tithes. And facts like that give us a much clearer window into the financial role that slavery played beyond colleges too in America as a whole.
For example, the list of American institutions involved in slavery extends to banking and finance and insurance. A predecessor of the bank JPMorgan Chase that we know today financed the sale of the 272 people in 1838. And Aetna, the health insurance company, sold insurance policies to slave owners on the lives of enslaved people. So not only does that mean that they got paid when the people they enslaved died, but it also meant that it helped slave owners mitigate risk, making them less wary about putting slaves in dangerous and potentially deadly situations.
CATHY WURZER: I know that you've spent a lot of time digging into the archives, and you've met with top Jesuit officials, many of the descendants. I know the Jesuits have expressed remorse, as we talked about earlier, and they've sat down and discussed this with descendants, but it's been hard to get everybody on the same page. I'm wondering, do you think this might end up in court?
LEE HAWKINS: Well, you know it could because a lot of these families have lawyered up. And what this tells us is that the discussions, if they ever occur in any serious way on a national level, will be just as hard as the quagmire that Georgetown and the Jesuits are faced with right now, and here's why.
When you consider Mr. Wright and his family, we're talking about four generations of family members, Cathy. Think about that. That's almost a century of families' labor stolen. This could be a test case for how other institutions who owe their very existence to slavery handle it.
CATHY WURZER: Wow. I'm curious about Mr. Wright Trusclair and the other Twin Cities descendants. How are they feeling now, generally speaking, now that everything is coming to light?
LEE HAWKINS: Well, Mr. Wright Trusclair would be happy to receive cash restitution for the free labor of his great grandparents and the three generations of family members who preceded them. But beyond the money, a lot of the families are asking for transparency. They would like to see the Jesuits give a public statement, detailing the truth that they use slavery revenues to capitalize Georgetown and many other Catholic institutions.
CATHY WURZER: Well, Lee Hawkins, this is quite a story. You've done an excellent job. Thanks for sharing it with us. We'll continue to follow what's happening with it, absolutely. Thank you, Lee.
LEE HAWKINS: OK, thanks. It's not going away any time soon I don't think.
CATHY WURZER: Lee Hawkins is a journalist, musician, and special correspondent for American Public Media. Lee's reporting was made possible in part by the Minnesota Legacy Amendments Arts and Cultural Heritage Fund. To hear more of Lee Hawkins' work, go to nprnews.org.
American Public Media special correspondent Lee Hawkins found out there's a lot more to this story than Georgetown originally said. And he's here with me now to talk about what happened and what descendants want to see happen next. Welcome back, Lee. How are you?
LEE HAWKINS: Hi, Cathy. Thank you. I'm great, thanks.
CATHY WURZER: I'm glad you're here. This is a very interesting story. So let's start back in 2017. That's when all this came to light. I want to know who were these individuals? What do we know about them?
LEE HAWKINS: Well, Cathy, the Georgetown University that we know today was founded by the Society of Jesus, the Maryland Jesuits to be exact. Jesuit leaders held a ceremony in which they apologized for selling 272 enslaved people to three Louisiana plantations recently, and that was to keep the failing college from going out of business. The public apology made by both the Jesuits and Georgetown was made on camera directly to the small group of descendants who had been identified at that point, and their apology was reported by dozens of major news outlets.
CATHY WURZER: Mm-hmm. Now you found that the university was much more involved in slavery than that.
LEE HAWKINS: Exactly. And what the Jesuits in Georgetown did not detail in that public apology is that Georgetown didn't just sell 272 people in 1838 to stay in business. Georgetown was founded and funded primarily through the revenues and business model of slavery, which means it would not have even existed without the Jesuits extracting and exploiting centuries of free labor from Black enslaved people.
So according to the slavery archives at Georgetown, the Jesuits arrived in North America in 1634, and by 1700, they'd purchased slaves and established six tobacco plantations in Southern Maryland. Over the next century and a half, Cathy, the Jesuits enslaved not 272 people, but about 1,100 people. And they worked those people and saved up money, and they used the revenues derived from their free labor to capitalize Georgetown College in the late 1700s and to found dozens of other Jesuit colleges and high schools, including the College of Holy Cross and Loyola University Maryland and Georgetown Prep, the school attended by people like to Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh.
So Cathy, this is something that Loyola University of Maryland only recently discovered, and it's very possible that there are other universes that have similar history and for some reason were never told by the Jesuits or are just not aware. And up to this point, it's mainly known by certain academics who study Jesuit history.
CATHY WURZER: What somber history it is too. Now, I'm very interested in what you found out. You tracked down a Minnesota family connected to this story.
LEE HAWKINS: Yes, I did. His name is Mr. Elton Wright Trusclair, and I found him through a Georgetown alumnus named Richard Cellini, and here's how he found them. In 2015, Georgetown formed a committee to research its slavery past and make recommendations to its president about how to atone for it. The next year they came back with a report, Mr. Cellini read it and emailed a committee member and asked if the people sold in 1838 had any living descendants, and he was told that all of them died as a result of some kind of swamp fever that they caught in Louisiana.
Well, frankly, he didn't believe that story, so he did a simple Google search, and he found out about descendants through an article that was written by a woman who happened to be the cousin of Elton Wright Trusclair, the man featured in my story. And that week, Mr. Cellini invested $50,000 of his own money to hire a genealogist to search for the descendants. And just in a matter of a month, they found 100 people, and that number of descendants is now more than 10,000, Cathy.
CATHY WURZER: Wow. OK, so the Minnesota connection is that there are people from the Twin Cities such as Mr. Wright Trusclair who are descendants of the folks who Georgetown sold back in 1838. I am really curious as to what they're saying about all this.
LEE HAWKINS: Yeah, and that's what makes it so interesting. A little before that apology ceremony, some of the people from descendant families wrote a letter to top Jesuit officials in Rome, and they asked them to set up a fund that would pay out $1 billion in restitution to the descendants of the families who they enslaved, and the Jesuits would not agree to that. Instead, they got together with a smaller group recently of descendants and they agreed with those descendants to raise $100 million.
And if they're successful in raising that money, it would then be put into a foundation to support educational scholarships for the families and also the nonprofit initiatives of many sort of Black community efforts. And many descendants have said that if the public knew that Georgetown had so many of these Jesuit schools were largely capitalized by slavery, people would agree that $1 billion in a payout to families who were impacted is much fairer than a commitment to raise $100 million for scholarships and charitable initiatives for the Black community at large.
And Richard Cellini says, a critical point here is that many Jesuit universities wouldn't exist without Black enslaved people. In fact, he calls Georgetown the largest historically Black college in America, facetiously of course. And here's something that he had to say.
RICHARD CELLINI: The university-- Georgetown University-- was primarily funded through the revenue and profits generated by these five slave plantations. So you see that the slavery wasn't just sort of an incidental, accidental occurrence that occurred somewhere in Georgetown's past or the past of the Maryland Jesuits.
Slavery was the business model. It was the primary revenue mechanism for at least 230 years for powering everything that the Maryland Jesuits did in North America. And for 50 years before Georgetown was founded to fund the founding of the university and then the next 50 years of Georgetown's first years of existence. Again, all paid primarily with revenues and profits produced by five slave plantations owned by the Maryland Jesuits in Southern Maryland.
CATHY WURZER: Wow. OK, now, Lee, you said earlier that Georgetown is not the only institution with strong ties to slavery. What other kinds of institutions have had those ties?
LEE HAWKINS: Well, there are more colleges, Cathy, after years of colleges and universities remaining silent about their ties to slavery. There was a consortium launched in 2014 called Universities Studying Slavery, and the list of universities involved is a who's who of American institutions that includes Harvard and Brown, to the University of Alabama and dozens of others who say they're beginning to investigate their tithes. And facts like that give us a much clearer window into the financial role that slavery played beyond colleges too in America as a whole.
For example, the list of American institutions involved in slavery extends to banking and finance and insurance. A predecessor of the bank JPMorgan Chase that we know today financed the sale of the 272 people in 1838. And Aetna, the health insurance company, sold insurance policies to slave owners on the lives of enslaved people. So not only does that mean that they got paid when the people they enslaved died, but it also meant that it helped slave owners mitigate risk, making them less wary about putting slaves in dangerous and potentially deadly situations.
CATHY WURZER: I know that you've spent a lot of time digging into the archives, and you've met with top Jesuit officials, many of the descendants. I know the Jesuits have expressed remorse, as we talked about earlier, and they've sat down and discussed this with descendants, but it's been hard to get everybody on the same page. I'm wondering, do you think this might end up in court?
LEE HAWKINS: Well, you know it could because a lot of these families have lawyered up. And what this tells us is that the discussions, if they ever occur in any serious way on a national level, will be just as hard as the quagmire that Georgetown and the Jesuits are faced with right now, and here's why.
When you consider Mr. Wright and his family, we're talking about four generations of family members, Cathy. Think about that. That's almost a century of families' labor stolen. This could be a test case for how other institutions who owe their very existence to slavery handle it.
CATHY WURZER: Wow. I'm curious about Mr. Wright Trusclair and the other Twin Cities descendants. How are they feeling now, generally speaking, now that everything is coming to light?
LEE HAWKINS: Well, Mr. Wright Trusclair would be happy to receive cash restitution for the free labor of his great grandparents and the three generations of family members who preceded them. But beyond the money, a lot of the families are asking for transparency. They would like to see the Jesuits give a public statement, detailing the truth that they use slavery revenues to capitalize Georgetown and many other Catholic institutions.
CATHY WURZER: Well, Lee Hawkins, this is quite a story. You've done an excellent job. Thanks for sharing it with us. We'll continue to follow what's happening with it, absolutely. Thank you, Lee.
LEE HAWKINS: OK, thanks. It's not going away any time soon I don't think.
CATHY WURZER: Lee Hawkins is a journalist, musician, and special correspondent for American Public Media. Lee's reporting was made possible in part by the Minnesota Legacy Amendments Arts and Cultural Heritage Fund. To hear more of Lee Hawkins' work, go to nprnews.org.
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