A foundation announced a $27 million gift
By Susan Svrluga, The Washington Post
Georgetown University and the Jesuits have given $27 million to benefit a foundation helping descendants of enslaved people who were sold to pay off a debt at the school in the 19th century.
The gift is a milestone in an ambitious plan to raise $100 million, and ultimately $1 billion, for the Descendants Truth & Reconciliation Foundation. The private nonprofit organization partnered with the Society of Jesus and the GU272 Descendants Association, which formed in 2016 after the university announced it would apologize for its role in the slave trade.
In 1838, Maryland Jesuits sold 272 people who worked on their plantations, breaking apart families and using the profit to benefit the university. The GU272 Descendants Association represents thousands of people; there are about 13,000 known descendants now, and the number keeps growing.
“The thing that’s most important to descendants is that this is a unique undertaking for all of us to bring about truth and reconciliation in this country, for what the Jesuits themselves confess to being a sin against God,” said foundation co-founder and chair emeritus Joe Stewart, a fifth-generation descendant of an enslaved man sold by the Jesuits.
Instead of pursuing reparations through a lawsuit or other means, he said, “We went straight to the Jesuits and called upon them to make a moral commitment to live up to what Catholicism has taught us.”
That work toward truth and reconciliation is more needed now in this country, Stewartsaid, than ever before.
Georgetown plans to apologize for its role in slavery
The giftannounced Wednesday (9/13/23), which brings the total funding of the Descendants Truth & Reconciliation Trust to $42 million, includes $10 million in new funds from Georgetown and $17 million from the Jesuits. Those gifts are in addition to a $1 million implementation grant from Georgetown and a $15 million one from the Jesuits when the foundation was created in 2021.
The gift will support the foundation’s goals, including by providing scholarships for descendants from early childhood through postsecondary education, helping elderly and infirm descendants, and funding efforts at racial healing, reconciliation, and truth across the country.
The foundation announced in July that it has partnered with the Thurgood Marshall College Fund to provide scholarships. Those provide up to $10,000 a year, said Monique Trusclair Maddox, a descendant who is CEO of the foundation and chair of its board of directors. She and Stewart went to Maryland earlier this month for a family reunion of descendants.
Georgetown sold their ancestors. They just had a historic family reunion.
“It was an emotional thing for most of us,” Stewart said.
“The pain still lingers,” said Tim Kesicki, chair of the Descendants Truth & Reconciliation Trust. “As a nation we are all struggling to heal these historic wounds and invest in the future.”
In 2016, days after the university announced plans to apologize for its role in the slave trade, a group of descendants called for a $1 billion foundation to promote reconciliation. At the time, Stewart cited the expression, “Nothing about us, without us.”
Over the years, descendants, students, and others have continued to press the issue, including in 2019, when students voted overwhelmingly, in a nonbinding but strong message, to establish a reparations fund for descendants.
Jesuits pledge $100 million for descendants of enslaved people the Catholic order once owned
Georgetown President John J. DeGioia said in a statement Wednesday (9/13/23) that it was an honor for the school to contribute to the foundation’s efforts.
“The work of reconciliation — grounded in a deep reckoning with the pain and injustice of slavery and its legacies — is an expression of hope,” he said. “The difficult truths of our past guide us in the urgent work of seeking and supporting reconciliation in our present and future.”
Henrietta Vines Pike, a descendant who helped organize the recent reunion in Southern Maryland, said the donation will start momentum for projects and programs that benefit the descendant community. Her family was torn apart for the benefit of the school, she said.
“I see the gift as Georgetown’s acknowledgment that our ancestors sacrificed their lives and received no benefit,” Vines Pike added.
First Published on September 13, 2023
