Librarian of Collections on Slavery, Memory, and Reconciliation
5th Floor, Lauinger Library
Overview
This guide describes significant sources within the Art, Manuscripts, Rare Books, and University Archives units of Booth for scholarly research and public conversations about slavery and race. The collections created by the Maryland Jesuits warrant special consideration because of the legacy of their participation in slavery and their role in the Christianization of Black people. The work of Booth is ongoing and updates will be made to this guide as the assessments of existing collections, collecting initiatives, and digitization projects progress.
Electronic resources -- including Lauinger Library databases and digital projects led by Georgetown researchers and outside scholars -- further extend the possibilities for the study of slavery and emancipation by Georgetown students and faculty. The digitized manuscript collections, computational data, and genealogical resources provided in these resources can help researchers answer questions about the experiences of the enslaved outside of Maryland and throughout the United States.
Featured Item: The 272
- The 272 byCall Number: E445.M3 S93 2023ISBN: 9780399590863Publication Date: 2023-06-13In 1838, a group of America's most prominent Catholic priests sold 272 enslaved people to save their largest mission project, what is now Georgetown University. In this groundbreaking account, journalist, author, and professor Rachel L. Swarns follows one family through nearly two centuries of indentured servitude and enslavement to uncover the harrowing origin story of the Catholic Church in the United States. Through the saga of the Mahoney family, Swarns illustrates how the Church relied on slave labor and slave sales to sustain its operations and to help finance its expansion. The story begins with Ann Joice, a free Black woman and the matriarch of the Mahoney family. Joice sailed to Maryland in the late 1600s as an indentured servant, but her contract was burned and her freedom stolen. Her descendants, who were enslaved by Jesuit priests, passed down the story of that broken promise for centuries. One of those descendants, Harry Mahoney, saved lives and the church's money in the War of 1812, but his children, including Louisa and Anna, were put up for sale in 1838. One daughter managed to escape, but the other was sold and shipped to Louisiana. Their descendants would remain apart until Rachel Swarns's reporting in The New York Times finally reunited them. They would go on to join other GU272 descendants who pressed Georgetown and the Catholic Church to make amends, prodding the institutions to break new ground in the movement for reparations and reconciliation in America. Swarns's journalism has already started a national conversation about universities with ties to slavery. The 272 tells an even bigger story, not only demonstrating how slavery fueled the growth of the American Catholic Church but also shining a light on the enslaved people whose forced labor helped to build the largest religious denomination in the nation.
