Transcript
Into America
Uncounted Millions BONUS: The GU272
Trymaine Lee: When you last heard from us, we had just taken you on a deep dive of an untold story about reparations.
John Flateau: If you follow our family’s trajectory, our predecessors clearly appreciated that they were given a running start.
Lee: A story of what could have been had America made good on its promise to make Black people whole after the Civil War.
Kellie Carter Jackson: A black entrepreneur in the 1860s that had several thousand dollars. The sky’s the limit, like literally the sky’s the limit.
Lee: We covered a lot of ground following the Coakley family and its descendants across generations and state lines. Over the last five episodes, they showed us the resilience of black people then and now and opened the door for a new angle on the ongoing debate of reparations.
Adele Flateau: Imagine if they had that little step up, it would have changed the course of lives of millions of people.
Lee: When we first met Gabriel Coakley, he was a cunning businessman, flipping the tables on a law meant to compensate white enslavers and using it to secure his own family’s freedom and financial security. And if that wasn’t the stuff of legend on its own, we also learned of his contributions to his own community, a billowing and blossoming black Washington, D.C.
John Flateau: He probably was one of our first business owners, and he had to be a pillar in some way to that community.
Lee: He owned a successful oyster business. He was also one of the founding members of the oldest black Catholic church in D.C., St. Augustine. But two decades before the founding members of St. Augustine would gather to form their own congregation, a darker history within the Catholic Church was unfolding just off the shore of the Potomac.
By the late 18th century, an order within the Catholic Church called the Society of Jesus, better known as the Jesuits, came to find considerable wealth in Maryland. The majority of that wealth came from the management of plantations, using slave labor, and then using the profits to support a number of faith-based academic institutions.
From the start, the Jesuits had conflicting stances on chattel slavery and human trafficking, but they justified any moral questions by offering these enslaved people a chance at so-called salvation. They could attend mass and had days off during the holy holidays. So, the plantations were supposed to support the construction and expansion of these Jesuit-based institutions, including the recently founded Georgetown College.
The problem was that the Jesuit priests simply weren’t good at managing these plantations, and it often put them in more debt. This is the situation they found themselves in during the summer of 1838. The school was in dire straits. In one final attempt to keep the school from shutting its doors, Georgetown President Reverend Thomas Mulledy, on June 19, 1838, brokered a deal with a congressman in Louisiana to sell the last of their 272 captives.
Of course, slavery was never gentle, but there was an understanding at the time by the Jesuits and those enslaved that leaving the D.C. area for the plantations of the deep south might bring an even harsher form of bondage than these men, women, and children had ever known. The largest and most well-known universities in the United States all have ties to the slave trade.
I mean, there were auctions on Princeton University’s campus. At Harvard, dorms were equipped with special quarters so that young enslavers could house their human property right alongside them. And the president of Rutgers University actually owned Sojourner Truth when she was still enslaved.
But this sale to fund Georgetown stands out. For the sheer number of people sold, and what would have been a truly remarkable amount at the time, a sale worth $115,000, or $4.2 million today, enough to save a university.
The killing of Michael Brown in 2014 ignited the Black Lives Matter movement and spurred a national conversation around racial healing. It was in this wake that students began to call out their own college’s ties to slavery. And that’s when this dark chapter of Georgetown’s history would come to see new light.
A Georgetown student journalist named Matthew Quallen published an article about the sale after hearing it briefly mentioned in a history class. In the article, he called for the renaming of Mulledy Hall, originally named after the reverend who had orchestrated the sale. Students launched protests in support of the descendants, organizing sit-ins and rallies around the hashtag GU272. The pressure campaign worked.
The school agreed to change the name of the building from Mulledy Hall to Isaac Hawkins Hall, honoring the first enslaved man listed on that bill of sale. The story got even more attention in 2016 when the New York Times published a lengthy expose on the university’s deep ties to slavery. Over the next few years, several groups would come together to trace the descendants of the sale.
At the forefront of this effort is the Georgetown Memory Project, set up by an alumnus who was shocked that the school had not already attempted to do this work. Since then, they claim to have identified more than 10,000 direct descendants, many of them still living in Louisiana near the plantations they were sold to. Then came the question of what could be done for those descendants.
Newscaster: Students have pushed the administration to acknowledge the university’s history. Those efforts resulted in the names of slaveholders being stripped from buildings and admissions preference being given to descendants of the 272.
Lee: The school did go on to offer legacy preference for any descendant of the 272 who might apply to Georgetown. One of those students was Melisande Short-Colomb.
Newscaster: A 63-year-old former chef is going back to school at Georgetown University.
Newscaster: She’s a freshman. And yes, she’s living on campus in a dorm room.
Lee: Some of the descendants even traveled to the university to receive what their ancestors were never given, a long-awaited formal apology.
Rev. Timothy Kesicki: Today, the Society of Jesus, who helped to establish Georgetown University and whose leaders enslaved and mercilessly sold your ancestors, stands before you to say that we have greatly sinned.
Lee: But for many, these words weren’t enough.
Georgia Goslee: We’re open always to have discussions, but after a period of time, you would think that there would be something tangible for the descendant.
Lee: In 2018, a group of students formed the GU272 advocacy team. They helped push a resolution to establish a reconciliation contribution, essentially a once a semester student fee that would directly benefit descendants on campus and beyond. The amount proposed was $27.20 to honor the 272 people trafficked and sold by the university.
Student: We’re not making a gift to these people. Their quality of life is directly tied to the actions of the university.
Newscaster: As Georgetown University continues to confront its past role in the slave trade, the students are now at this moment weighing in on the issue of reparations.
Lee: The resolution was voted into effect with overwhelming support from Georgetown student body. But after five years, the proposal is still sitting at the desk of Georgetown’s board of directors. In its place, the school launched a reconciliation fund, $400,000 a year towards projects that directly benefit descendants of those enslaved.
Then in 2021, the school contributed $1 million towards establishing the Descendants Truth and Reconciliation Foundation, a charity focused on education and racial healing. And just last year, the school gave a $27 million gift to the foundation. With these actions, Georgetown has shown at least some commitment to funding racial healing in higher education.
But short of putting money directly in the pockets of the descendants, is it enough? What about actual monetary reparations? Should they also be cutting checks? Like should that be on the table?
Kyla Matthews: Should it be and would it be are two different questions.
Lee: Right.
(MUSIC PLAYING)
Lee: I’m Trymaine Lee, and this is Into America. On this special bonus episode of our series, “Uncounted Millions,” sponsored by the W.K. Kellogg Foundation, we look at the GU272 and what their story reveals about how tangled some of America’s most elite institutions are to the peculiar institution of slavery. Today, we dive into what it means to honor history and maybe repair it.
Marcia Chatelain: The Jesuits arrived in Maryland in 1634, and they were a small yet ambitious group of Catholic priests that were destined to create institutions for the intellectual and spiritual betterment of all Catholic people. They were a small group relative to Catholics in the United States and Catholics in the world. But their immense power came in their connections through slaveholding.
Lee: Dr. Marcia Chatelain is a professor of Africana Studies at the University of Pennsylvania. She was a faculty member at Georgetown for many years, including the years that the GU272 story was gaining national attention.
Chatelain: Catholic slaveholding was part of the financial backbone of the building and the expansion of the Catholic Church in the United States, but particularly Catholic institutions. And so, what the Jesuit story teaches us, it isn’t about numbers, but it’s about scale and capacity to build wealth through the system. And so, the sale in 1838 of 272 people at one time is one of the largest sales of people in the United States.
And so, there were not Jesuits in all 50 states, Jesuits at every nation at the time, but there didn’t need to be. Their power resided in their ability to align themselves with wealthy slaveholders and to be part of an economy that is ultimately driven by the ownership and sale of people.
Lee: Within these Catholic institutions, colleges and universities like Georgetown were crucial.
Chatelain: The story of Georgetown and slaveholding is also the story of the ambitions of the Catholic Church in the 18th and 19th century to build institutions in the United States to not only train young men for service to the church, but to also build the intellectual capacity of Catholics and non-Catholics to take on the world and to govern.
So much of the elite institutions, whether it’s the older Catholic institutions, the Ivy League, the southern university systems, a lot of them built their wealth off of the system of slavery. A lot of these institutions were built by enslaved people. A lot of the students and the faculty and staff were serviced by enslaved people on campus. There were practices like at Georgetown where enslaved people were rented out to people in the neighborhood for services. So, there’s a way in which this system wraps around the entire university.
Lee: Dr. Chatelain says that Georgetown’s ties to slavery in many ways is not unique in America. What is unique is the university’s grappling with this legacy, including thousands of descendants of those who Georgetown had enslaved and later sold. We asked Dr. Chatelain to reflect on the time when revelations of this story first came to light.
Chatelain: I think that it was a period of great hopefulness on the part of a number of constituent groups at the university. I think that for the university, they saw it as an opportunity to really define themselves as pushing the issue of racial justice to the fore. But I think that the kind of naivete that surprised people that there was Jesuit slaveholding, there was a naivete, I think, on the part of the institution to think that this is a conversation that could be initiated and then wrapped up pretty easily.
I think that the real criticisms and the real conflict that has emerged as the university has engaged the descendant community is also really valuable and really important. No one is going to get this right on their first take. I don’t know if the university imagined that this issue would be an issue eight or nine years after it first convened its conversations about this.
But I think that’s the nature of this particular issue. It lives with people across generations, and I think it will live with Georgetown across generations to come.
(MUSIC PLAYING)
Lee: So, Kyla, would you mind saying and spelling your first and last name for us?
Matthews: Yeah, it’s Kyla Matthews, K-Y-L-A, Matthews, M-A-T-T-H-E-W-S.
Lee: Kyla Matthews is one of the very few descendants of the GU272 who have enrolled at Georgetown. Where are you from and what year are you in school?
Matthews: I grew up in Silver Spring, Maryland, right outside of D.C., and I am a second-year law student at Georgetown.
Lee: So, with roots in the DMV area and D.C., certainly you were familiar with Georgetown University, but I wonder when you first heard about the Georgetown 272?
Matthews: I didn’t hear about that until I learned about my own family’s connection with that history, and that was, I think, my freshman year back in 2017. I gave my mother an ancestry DNA kit for Christmas, but then as my mom was going through her results and matching with, you know, distant relatives, she was seeing this denotation on some of her matches that said Georgetown Memory Project, and she got curious what that was about.
And then she connected with Richard Cellini, who started the Georgetown Memory Project, and learned that we were connected to the GU 272, that our ancestors were among the people whose labor really established Georgetown and who were then sold to finance the school and to settle their debts.
Lee: And what were your like first feelings with you and your mom sitting there looking at this and seeing Georgetown Memory Project? What were you feeling?
Matthews: Oh, I was super shocked because this was also, it aligned with when the country was learning about this history. So, it was super shocking to me, especially as somebody who grew up in D.C. and Georgetown is certainly, you know, the kind of the preeminent university there. And yeah, I think at first the initial feeling was shock.
Lee: Yeah. And so, what was the story that you learned about your ancestor? What is actually the connection?
Matthews: Harry Mahoney was Louisa Mahoney’s father, and Louisa was my fourth great-grandmother. She had a sister named Anna, and those were the relatives who were part of the G272 sale. The one thing that I forgot that I did leave out is that during the War of 1812, when the British were encroaching on St. Indigo’s plantation where they lived, Harry Mahoney, Louisa’s father, actually hid the Jesuits’ money.
Like he hid it and buried it so that the British soldiers weren’t able to steal it. And as a reward, the family was promised that they would never be sold and that they would stay together and not be broken up.
Twenty-something years later, my direct ancestor Louisa was actually warned in advance by a priest on the plantation that the sale was happening. And so, she hid from her captors, and Louisa and her older sister were separated as a result. But it’s really because of that warning that she got that my family, that my roots are still in the DMV, kind of mid-Atlantic region.
And so, it just really put into perspective how much my ancestors’ choices and their actions really affect my life today. And that wasn’t something that I had thought about or considered before learning about this history.
Lee: You know, it’s one thing learning this kind of new history, right, this new understanding of the role that your family played in institution and buying and selling people, but then you’re actually also opening up this whole new family line in Louisiana.
So, by virtue of circumstance, you know, part of your family was able to stay in the DMV area, but another part was shipped off. And I wonder if you’ve connected with some of those descendants and what those feelings were like meeting these new parts of your family.
Matthews: I have, yeah. In 2018, actually, we had a big family reunion in Louisiana for all of the descendants. And it was such a powerful experience. They were a very tight-knit community that was destroyed when the sale was executed. So being able to connect with these long-lost relatives, I would say it was really, really healing in a way.
And it totally put into perspective the divergent paths that we took, how Georgetown went on to be this amazing university and kind of contrasting that with the reality of most of the descendants. It’s stark, the differences.
Lee: So, with all of that, you’re discovering, you know, these new chapters in your family’s history and of the descendants. But then you hear that Georgetown is offering some sort of special status to descendants. What was your initial understanding of this? Was it free admission? Is it legacy status? What was your initial understanding and what’s the reality of what the status is?
Matthews: It’s legacy admission. There are no tuition benefits, no scholarship or anything like that in place. But thus far, its legacy admission, which is kind of, you know, it’ll boost you if you’re kind of like on the border. That’s typically how that works. I still don’t think it’s something that’s like readily accessible to the majority of us, of GU272 descendants, especially given the high cost of college and especially a college like Georgetown.
Lee: You know, there were a lot of us who heard about this and thought it was like, oh, this is reparations. You know, the first institution in America to pay reparations. This doesn’t necessarily sound like reparations, but do you consider this what’s happening now and the status for descendants? Do you consider that reparations?
Matthews: I think that it’s an attempt. It’s some attempt at repair, but I don’t think that I would call it reparations just because it doesn’t really remediate the harm. I think that reparations are something that identifies the specific harm that was done and that sustains and then works to repair that harm. Yeah.
Lee: Do you think your legacy status helped you get in or what role do you think your legacy status played in your admission?
Matthews: I’m not sure. It’s hard to say. I did mention it in my application essay. It’s possible that it played a role. It’s not something that they like notify you of, you know, when you get admitted. I will say like I applied and was accepted to like other kind of comparable law schools so it’s hard to know. But I chose Georgetown because I had a connection to that school that was unlike what I felt about any of the others.
Lee: We reached out to Georgetown to ask if Kyla was given legacy admission status. They told us they could not comment on individual students for privacy reasons.
What are some of the misunderstandings that non-descendants have or people outside of the campus community have about what’s actually going on here or even on the campus community? Some people on the campus community also have misunderstandings.
Matthews: Yeah, that’s true. Yeah. I think the biggest misunderstanding is probably that the descendants who attend the school have their tuition paid for. I think that people think that because it’s maybe perceived as this reparations program, that it’s free. But that’s definitely not the case. Many people have to take on debt, which is why I’m like really hesitant to call it reparations, because really that just entrenches wealth inequality. It doesn’t really repair it so.
Lee: Might exacerbate it like short comes —
Matthews: Yeah.
Lee: — and then it gets settled with $80,000 worth of debt.
Matthews: Exactly.
Lee: How many other descendants are currently at Georgetown? Have you met other folks who are descendants that are there today?
Matthews: I have.
Lee: What’s that like?
Matthews: It’s less than five. Yeah, I have met and connected with other descendants. We’ve done things on campus to honor the GU272 and our ancestors specifically. In November, we had a libation ceremony, which was a really powerful moment that really got the community together.
Lee: Does it feel like a real connection to these other folks who descend from the 272?
Matthews: It does. I think because I know how close those communities were before and how they lived and labored together for hundreds of years. So, it feels like this reunification when I’m with them and really fixing some of what was broken when the sale occurred. And almost 200 years later, we’re able to just kind of like heal some of that.
Lee: What more could Georgetown University be doing outside of, you know, legacy status at an elite university? What more could the university maybe do outside of campus, outside of education in perhaps these centers where folks are still living, like in rural Louisiana?
Matthews: I think that legacy admission is something that benefits like a really select minority of descendants. But I think investing in education, especially like early childhood education, is one thing.
Also, health care. I mean, Georgetown has a huge hospital offering health care going down to Louisiana. Georgetown trained doctors and residents going down to the communities and offering health care.
I mean, there’s so many resources and so much that can be done. And I think that one of the good things about kind of the novelty of all of this is that we can be really creative and imaginative in thinking about what we do and what the school does.
Lee: What about actual monetary reparations? Should they also be cutting checks? Like should that be on the table?
Matthews: Should it be and would it be are two different questions.
Lee: Right. Well, should it be? What do you think? Should the university be considering, you know, financial monetary reparations?
Matthews: I mean, I definitely don’t think that that’s a bad idea. I think that like, yes, morally there’s justification for that. Absolutely. Is that like realistic? I kind of doubt it, unfortunately. But yeah, I mean, in an ideal world, given how much wealth the school has accumulated, paying it back, that should happen.
Lee: They can only exist because of the sale of 272 human beings.
Matthews: Right.
Lee: So now that you’re a student at Georgetown University, you know, literally walking in the footsteps of your ancestors, what’s it been like for your family? I have to imagine that some of the elders in your family, how are they feeling about you being on the campus and being this torchbearer in some way?
Matthews: They’re really proud of me. And same with the other descendants in my generation and their ancestors. We had a moment last year where we all got together at the Georgetown library to acknowledge just the history and kind of have like a memorial commemoration. And there are people from as young as 12 to senior, senior citizens.
And you can just see how proud and I think really in awe they are, especially being they are closer to the history and to, you know, like I’m sure there are people who heard stories from their grandparents about the sale and about what happened to our family. So, I think that for them it means a lot. And I think that they’re really proud to see what we’re doing today.
Lee: More after the break.
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Lee: It’s been almost ten years since the GU272 made headlines. In that time, many other descendant organizations have formed, several to aid in identifying and connecting descendants, like the Georgetown Memory Project, which helped Kyla’s family uncover their history. Other groups are focused on repair, restitution, and reparations including some based in Louisiana.
Many descendants can trace their lineage to a small, nearly all-Black town in southern Louisiana called Maringouin, whose population is around a thousand. It was this area where many of the 272 enslaved people were taken to work on cotton and sugarcane plantations.
The 2800-acre West Oak Plantation, where most of these enslaved people worked, was officially established as the town of Maringouin in 1907. Today, its main fixtures are a gas station, the local feed store and the Catholic church for many of their ancestors once worshipped.
One of the more prominent organizations is the Descendants Truth and Reconciliation Foundation, who are working in direct partnership with the Jesuits. One of their goals is to build a billion-dollar endowment. I spoke with two of the organization’s leaders.
Monique Trusclair Maddox: I am Monique Trusclair Maddox. I am a descendant of Jesuit enslavement and I am currently the president and CEO of the Descendants Truth and Reconciliation. Our foundation is based in Baton Rouge and I currently reside in Edina, Minnesota.
Kesicki: My name is Father Tim Kesicki. I currently reside in Washington, D.C. I am chair of the Descendants Truth and Reconciliation Trust, past president of the Jesuit Conference of Canada and the United States.
Lee: Monique, where did you grow up?
Maddox: I grew up in Maringouin, Louisiana, which is right near Baton Rouge, Louisiana.
Lee: Well, big shout to Baton Rouge. My wife is from Baton Rouge, so she’ll be happy to hear this. I went to Southern University, so she’ll be pleased.
Maddox: Wonderful, wonderful. I took some formative programs at Southern.
Lee: Excellent. And what are your connections there today? Do you still have family ties there?
Maddox: Absolutely. Most of my family is still there. Our family went to Maringouin, Louisiana and we remain there largely. A few of us have left for opportunities outside of there, but most of my family is still there.
Lee: So, for those of us who aren’t familiar with that area, what’s Maringouin like today?
Maddox: It’s very rural. There’s one stoplight. There are a few stop signs throughout the town. It’s an impoverished area with a lot of need. There is still one Catholic church, as has been, and there are several other communities there, but the demographics haven’t changed a great deal.
Lee: So, when did you first hear of the GU272? Was it a story that you grew up with? When did you first hear about it?
Maddox: It definitely was not a story that I grew up with. I learned about it in the “New York Times” article in 2016. Rachel Swarns wrote an article about what does Georgetown owe its descendants, and that is when I first learned of it, leaving mass that Sunday morning.
Lee: And how did you ultimately discover a connection between your family and the GU272?
Maddox: It was actually quite simple. When I read the article, I saw someone from that town of Maringouin that I grew up in standing in the cemetery where my father’s buried. And I knew immediately, while I need to read more into this, there’s more to this story than just Georgetown and what is this person doing from the small town of Maringouin in this article.
And so, I reached out to Adam Rothman at Georgetown University, who was listed in that article, and Adam and I were able to make some connections right away. I also had the fortune of having my mother live with me, and that manifest was available in that online article, and so we were able to look and see her great-grandfather listed on that manifest.
Lee: I don’t want to be hyperbolic, but this discovery must have like shaken up a lot of what you understood about your family.
Maddox: Absolutely. It’s not hyperbolic at all. It shook me to my core, quite honestly, because this is the faith that I grew up in. I grew up in the Catholic Church, and I knew nothing of this. I knew nothing about how we made it to Louisiana or that our family was enslaved by Jesuits and the Catholic Church. So, it really shook me to my core, absolutely.
Lee: And Father Kesicki, one, where are you from, and how did you first hear about the GU272?
Kesicki: I’m from Pennsylvania. I grew up in Erie, Pennsylvania, with family now largely in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. I became a Jesuit, started in 1984, became a priest in 1994, but it was in the summer of 1991, I was studying in New Orleans at Xavier University. They had a summer institute for black Catholic studies, and that’s where I first read about Jesuit slaveholding.
However, I knew about the 1838 sale and the Jesuits’ involvement in slaveholding, but from 1991 until 2016, it was really history in a book. There was simply no connection to living people.
Lee: So, between the history of the involvement of the Church in slavery and then discovering this GU-272 story, how did it shape, refine, reveal your faith and your understanding of the practice of Catholicism and being a Jesuit?
Kesicki: Yes, well, I realized that when I was studying in a book, I could put that book back on the shelf. When it came to meeting living descendants, it would begin a relationship. And now I was learning the history through the lens of descendants, and it really did change my understanding of the Jesuit order and its involvement, as well as what we would have to do to move forward.
Lee: How did those two lenses differ? How did those two things collide, conflict, juxtapose?
Kesicki: Yes, because the tendency within the Jesuit lens was to call ourselves benevolent slaveholders, to say, well, that was the custom at the time, and why we baptized and catechized those whom we held enslaved. There was really never a justification for the 1838 sale, other than to say that that was poorly done. But again, that’s all I knew.
When I met the descendants, I began to really live the history, to understand the pain and the trauma of slavery, and to recognize that we were part of this. We were part of the problem, that this was a grave sin. A grave sin. And I think the key was that we weren’t going to be able to reconcile from this ourselves.
Lee: So Black people all across the country, not just those who descend from the G272, have long been calling for and wanting and demanding an apology from this country and the institutions that have been so critical at subjugating and oppressing black folks then as is now. And in 2017, I know you offered an apology on behalf of the Society of Jesus.
Kesicki: We pray with you today because we have greatly sinned and because we are profoundly sorry. We betrayed the very name of Jesus, for whom our least society is named.
Lee: And I wonder for you, recalling those days before you delivered the speech, what was going through your mind? Do you remember writing those first lines of the speech? And just what went into preparing for this moment, which is pretty monumental?
Kesicki: Yes, I relied, I must say, on the help of African-American Jesuits because I knew most of them, I called them. And there aren’t many African American Jesuits in the United States, about 20, which I think is partially connected to this history because we’re more than almost 1,500 Jesuits. And they were very helpful in talking to me.
But I can remember the first line I wrote, I said, how is it that we worship the same God, said the same prayers, read the same scriptures, sang the same hymns, yet failed to see each other as equal before God? We betrayed the name of Jesus, for which the Society of Jesus is named. Those were the first words that I wrote. And then the apology grew out of that interaction with the African-American Jesuits.
Lee: Monique, do you remember when you first learned that there would be this apology? And were you there?
Maddox: I do. I actually was. I learned through Georgetown University, announcing that they were going to have this apology ceremony of memory, slaveholding, and contrition. And so, I did. I was there when Father Tim made that apology. I sat on the third row. I did not know him.
Years later, I came to know that was him because I was in such a fog in that place. I mean, you can imagine being someone who didn’t know this history coming into a place and not understanding what is really happening here. I’m still in a state of confusion and disillusionment. So, yes, I was absolutely there.
Lee: What was the response from, you know, folks in your family and the broader community? Did you engage with folks who might have heard this or got wind of the apology?
Maddox: Actually, when I went to Georgetown, I learned who some of those other descendants were. I did not know until I got there, like, why are you here? Your people from the town that I grew up in. We didn’t have any communication about going there.
Lee: Right.
Maddox: I didn’t know who they were. I didn’t know who other descendants were. And so, then we began to galvanize as descendants, what is our response going to be?
Lee: So, after the apology, a number of descendant groups started to kind of, you know, sprout a little bit. Talk to me about how your particular foundation emerged out of that moment.
Maddox: We actually knew that our way forward was through reconciliation. We had to reconcile with where we were. America hasn’t done anything about reparations and we said, we’re not going to take a legal path. We need to take a moral path. And when we speak about the morality and the sin that has occurred, how do you turn away from that as people of the faith? And so, we knew then Jesuits had to listen to what we had to say.
And so, we came into a dialogue with those Jesuits to say, let’s have a conversation. As difficult as it may be, let’s have a conversation about a partnership and reconciliation to create something that is bigger, bigger than today, bigger than the future that could impact generations to come.
Lee: And what were some of those early conversations? I think you made a clear distinction there. There’s one path of reparations, which this country has never taken a real good faith step towards. Then there’s reconciliation, but this country also hasn’t taken a good faith step in terms of reconciliation. But do you remember those early conversations among the descendants about, you know, what might be the most fruitful path to go?
Maddox: There were many options on the table. We then came to, you know, we wanted to do something to help descendants, but we also knew that truth, racial healing and transformation would really impact America. And so that became one of our main pillars, truth, racial healing and transformation.
How do we bring that on a national level to help not just descendants, but to help this nation heal, to help Catholics heal, to help everyone heal in this country? And that could have a greater impact than what you can see in any amount of money that anyone can give.
Lee: I want to touch on some of your points in a minute, but I want to ask you, Father Kesicki. When did you first like join forces with Monique? But also, when did you all first meet? How did you all meet?
Kesicki: Monique and I actually first met through the Descendants Foundation Board. And Descendants had met at the campus of Southern University in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. And southern was very important because it was close to Maringouin.
And when we really sat down in dialogue, we had to sit face to face with one another in almost a healing circle and share our truth. And that was very, very painful. It was excruciating at times because slavery was excruciating. And hearing the sense of betrayal, you’ve heard that word, the sense of betrayal that we were men of God who enslaved and sometimes hurt, brutalized, and sold people was painful.
And yet that proximity to one another, that ability to sit in a room and to hold space for that kind of pain and trauma, and then to recognize that there was an opportunity before us. There was an opportunity before us because these descendants wanted to sit down face to face with us.
And they would often say, you know, what we’re doing is as much for you, if not more for you than it is for ourselves. Because what future are you going to have if you don’t face this history with courage and follow our lead in reconciling?
Lee: So, Father Kesicki, it’s one thing to have someone like you in that circle who since the 90s was having your eyes open to some of the harsh realities of the connection between the Catholic Church and enslavement. But I wonder, the folks back at Georgetown University and Jesuits there, what was their response?
Kesicki: There’s an expression, if you’ve met one Jesuit, you’ve met one Jesuit. We are hardly all alike. And I would say that one’s proximity to descendants in the history affected his response. So, there were some Jesuits at Georgetown who were part of the working group that studied this. They were very eager to see that dialogue was happening and that we had entered into a formal process.
But there are those, not just at Georgetown, but Jesuit institutions throughout the United States for whom they don’t have this proximity, who really bring to the conversation their perspective, which is formed by their upbringing, which is formed by the context in which they live, the conversations they have.
And there’s still conversion that’s happening in the hearts and minds of Jesuits as well as those with whom we work. And that’s a big part of this, is the ongoing dialogue and sense of conversion to understand why this work is so important.
Lee: So, Monique, the eye-opening is just one part of this, but I know the foundation has other goals. What are some of the actual tangible goals of the foundation?
Maddox: So, in January of this year, we began a partnership with Thurgood Marshall College Fund to be able to give out up to $10,000 to descendants. Only thing you have to do is to be certified as a descendant. We also have some other pillars that we’re looking to launch later this year. And one of those is around housing support.
So, we have identified a partner that will be able to come in and make homes more accessible for our elderly to be able to come forward and live in those homes and not be ashamed, whether it’s weatherization or railings within your home or widening your doors. We’re looking to say, here are some things that you earned. You earned as being a descendant of this enslavement because your ancestors, our ancestors, my ancestors have worked so hard for this. And then we’re also looking to give out grants to other community development groups.
Lee: And how much has the foundation raised so far? I know Georgetown University has seeded a bunch of money into the foundation, but can you give us a sense of how much the foundation is sitting on now?
Maddox: At this point, we have commitments of $42 million and currently working on those. It is a $1 billion vision, and the Jesuits committed to the first $100 million of that.
Lee: Now, we’ve talked to a number of descendants who say all of these efforts are fine and good. But if it doesn’t involve cash payments to individuals who descend from those who were sold as part of the G272, they might be in good faith, but it’s not enough, you know. Our people were sold to benefit the institution financially. So why wouldn’t there be some finances directed right towards those descendants?
Maddox: Yeah, so cash reparations is something that everyone’s entitled to get. Go for it if you want it. That’s not the path that we chose with this foundation. Our foundation has chosen to put dollars toward those descendants. It may not go directly in your pockets, but we’re looking to help all generations of these descendants.
So, we started with the young, those who are looking for advancement in their careers, to better their education, to uplift their salary base and their tax base, and close that racial gap, that wealth gap. And then we also are looking at our elderly, but those aren’t the only pillars and demographics that we’re looking to serve. We also plan to serve others in between there, from birth to death, but we had to start somewhere. And so, these are the programs that we began with.
Lee: What do you say to that, Father because these folks are saying, listen, it’s, you know, cut a check.
Kesicki: Yes, well, so the two major lessons I learned in the dialogue process, first of all, was descendants said to us, Jesuits, you committed this sin. You can’t set the terms of your own forgiveness, so you can’t go out on your own. The second thing, though, they said that I heard so clearly was you sold our ancestors once. We don’t want to sell them again. We’re not looking for a settlement. That was a key distinction.
We don’t believe there is any dollar amount you can offer to settle with this history. The reason why we want a billion-dollar foundation is descendants are born every day. It’s not our generation or even our children’s generation. It’s going to be generations after that. We want to start something that’s a massive investment that will grow to go in perpetuity.
And key is, as essential as the dollars in the foundation are, is the partnership, that we are working together. Because sometimes with a settlement, you don’t even have to admit you did anything wrong. You can just say, this takes care of it. The partnership means we always admit and confess that this was wrong.
Lee: So certainly, there are a number of descendants who support that idea and that path. What’s been some of the pushback you both have heard from the descendant community?
Maddox: Well, cash reparations is one of those things. Why am I not getting some dollars? I could take $42 million and divide it by the number of descendants that would sign up today. But that’s not going to monumentally change their lives. I’m not saying that they don’t deserve dollars. Go for it. If you want to go for dollars, go for it.
But what I am saying is there’s no amount of money that anyone can pay me that would repair any hurt or monumentally change the way my family felt when our ancestors were enslaved. No amount of money is going to change that. I could get a million dollars and I could blow it today.
But from my perspective, that’s not going to change my life for my generations in the future, my grandchildren and my great-grandchildren that are yet to be born. And what we’re looking for is a foundation that’s going to sustain generation after generation after generation.
Lee: What do each of you think of the idea of perhaps free tuition for descendants who, you know, wish to attend Georgetown University? Is that something that you believe is warranted, makes sense, could be possible?
Maddox: We don’t believe that Georgetown alone should offer any sort of free tuition. That’s great if someone wants to go to Georgetown. Others may not want to go to Georgetown. So that’s only one institution.
Lee: Well, I guess I do wonder, why not, though? Georgetown and beyond, why not? Do you think it’s because it’s unlikely? Is it making some politics there? Why not?
Kesicki: Yes. There were some who said, wouldn’t the appropriate response simply be to offer scholarships at Jesuit institutions for descendants and stop there? But if you think about that, what you’re doing is you’re raising money to help endow or fund those scholarships. But what descendants said to me was, look, those funds are going to your institutions. And there’s a sense of, are you selling our ancestors again to raise money for your institutions?
And the term they used to use was self-dealing. And there is a fear that we now, Jesuits or any institution with this history, use this history for self-dealing to bring in money to its endowment or its annual fund or whatever its funding mechanisms are. And that’s why we’re calling for a bold vision of a foundation. So, it’s a matter of priority.
Certainly, the descendants have said, look, it’s both and certainly, whatever these institutions want to give, we welcome that. But we don’t want that to be their priority. So, let’s keep our eye focused on the priority, which is the Descendants Foundation.
Lee: Father Kesicki, I do want to ask you this. We’re in this current moment where, you know, DEI has become a bad word, right? Woke has become a bad word. And I wonder how bound you all are, even with the highest ambitions, the idea that the Jesuits are simply not going to do anything or sign on to anything that says reparations. How are you bound by the big institution, the big ideas?
Kesicki: No, thank you for that question. The opportunity that I feel Jesuits have here is that we are not entering this conversation in the abstract. This isn’t something, well, this is what mainline society is doing. Let’s see how we’re going to carve our way. This is a very concrete part of our history. These are living descendants. This is an opportunity to do something.
And I think it can frame our approach to DEI. It can frame our approach to conscious and unconscious bias. All of these things, the sense of the privilege we have and what that privilege was built upon. So, I see this as a tremendous opportunity. And it is my hope and our hope that other institutions, because we know many institutions, the whole federal government was born out of this, could see this as an opportunity for our country and not a threat.
And that’s why we have to get over fear and shame. Fear and shame are only going to drive us apart. When we look at opportunity, healing, growth, and commitment, then we see prospects for a better tomorrow for the generations that come after us.
Lee: You know, Monique, speaking of opportunity and community and hope and all those words that Father Kesicki just mentioned, you’re from Maringouin, where you talk about folks are still struggling in any number of ways. How do you hope to be able to aim some of these resources, you know, raised towards that community that you’re from? Folks who are still trying to, again, they’re still feeling the pressure seeded from those days, honestly. So how do you think you guys can help them?
Maddox: You know, I went there recently. I’m there quite often with our foundation being based in Baton Rouge. And I see the hurt. I see the pain. I see in my own families that each of them could use dollars. And we’re there to help. So, once you’re certified, we encourage all descendants to become certified in this process. Once you are certified, the dollars can flow. You can get the support.
We have a partner for home assistance that will better 90% of those homes. This is not an income-based program that we’re offering. These grants are specifically, if you are a descendant, you are eligible to receive them. And that’s the easiest thing that you can do to get dollars in their hands.
Lee: Do you hope that what’s happening here could be a model for other institutions beyond the church?
Maddox: Absolutely. Absolutely. It’s beyond Georgetown University. It’s beyond just Jesuit institutions. It’s baked into many, many institutions. And those universities studying slavery have a responsibility to go beyond their institutions, beyond just naming buildings or putting monuments up. Do something more. Be action-oriented in this community and be able to grow what we’re looking to grow in this country.
Lee: Speaking of naming buildings, I understand that the building that had a name change on Georgetown’s campus was named after one of your ancestors.
Maddox: That’s correct.
Lee: What was that moment for you like to see that a man who likely toiled and spilled his blood and sweat into that campus is now being honored in a way that was unexpected for many folks? What was it like?
Maddox: You know, as I mentioned, when I went to that celebration ceremony at Georgetown’s campus, I was pretty numb. I was disillusioned, confused, didn’t really know what was happening. I sit back in awe. And yes, I thought, I need to be here. I need to be present to witness what’s happening.
Was I impressed? Yeah, maybe. Did it change my life monumentally? No. Did I walk away saying, oh, I’m proud of Grandpa Isaac? Yes, maybe. But at the same time, what next? So those moments are just moments in time. What next? That building’s going to crumble one day. What next?
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Lee: A couple of weeks ago, Georgetown announced that starting this fall, every first-year student will be required to take a new one-unit course called Race, Power, and Justice at Georgetown. New students will learn about the history of the school’s ties to enslavement and the 272 people who were sold to save it. Thank you for tuning in to this special bonus episode of “Into America,” sponsored by the W.K. Kellogg Foundation.
If you want more of Into America and you’re close to New York, check out a live event we’re doing at the 92nd Street Y on May 29. We’ll be continuing the conversation on reparations with special guests, Nikole Hannah-Jones and Michael Harriot. For more, go to 92y.org/events.
And some really great news. “Into America” is nominated for a Webby, but we need your vote to win. So please check out the show notes for more information about how to cast your vote.
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This episode of “Into America” was produced by Max Jacobs. Our associate producer is Janmaris Perez. Catherine Anderson and Bob Mallory are the sound engineers. Bryson Barnes is the head of audio production. Original music is by Hannis Brown. Aisha Turner is the executive producer of MSNBC Audio. And I’m Trymaine Lee. Thanks again for joining us on “Uncounted Millions.”