The Families Who Were Enslaved and Sold to Build the American Catholic Church
January 1, 2023
In 2016, journalist Swarns (American Tapestry) broke the story about the Jesuit priests who sold 272 enslaved people in 1838 to save their mission, the newly founded Georgetown University. Here she expands on the story of the 272 through the history of one family divided by the sale, moving back to the 1600s, when free Black woman Ann Joice arrived as an indentured servant and was subsequently enslaved, then forward to two descendants reunited by her reporting and current efforts at reparation.
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Starred review from April 3, 2023
NYU journalism professor Swarns (American Tapestry) expands on her 2016 New York Times article in this immersive and doggedly reported account, which reveals how the 1838 sale of 272 enslaved men, women, and children saved the debt-ridden Jesuit college now known as Georgetown University. In devastating detail, Swarns traces the sale’s impact on the families of Anna and Louisa Mahoney, sisters who labored on a Jesuit-owned plantation in St. Mary’s County, Md., until Anna and her children were sold to a plantation in Louisiana. Thanks to DNA testing and Swarns’s reporting, their descendants reunited nearly two centuries later. Intertwined with the Mahoney family story is Swarns’s searing investigation into the Catholic Church’s deep involvement in American slavery, which has fueled debates at Georgetown and other colleges and universities about what the Church owes to the descendants of those whose labor and sale value bolstered its financial, political, and spiritual power in America. Swarns makes excellent use of archival sources to recreate the lives of the enslaved families and the circumstances of the sale, which was fiercely opposed by some Jesuit priests at the time. It’s a powerful reminder of how firmly the roots of slavery are planted in America’s soil.
Starred review from June 1, 2023
A probing examination of the causes and aftermath of the sale of 272 people enslaved by Catholic priests in 1838. Swarns, a New York Times contributor and NYU journalism professor, expands on a story she published in the Times in 2016, in which she explored the sale of people enslaved by the Jesuit order in Maryland to plantation owners in Louisiana. The proceeds--approximately $4.5 million in today's dollars--were used to fund Georgetown University (then College) as well as Holy Cross in Massachusetts and Loyola College in Baltimore. The author smoothly weaves together the stories of the priests who, beginning in the 18th century, supervised plantations in Maryland, collectively becoming "one of the largest enslavers in Maryland," and the families they enslaved, whose stories were passed down to their descendants. She carefully analyzes the economic rationales for both owning and ultimately selling the enslaved people, contrasting the monetary data with the devastating personal impacts of the sales, relocation, and enslavement of the people involved. Her careful look at the Jesuit hierarchy reveals both villains--e.g., the Georgetown president who squandered money and paid little attention to the lives of those sold to raise funds for the college--and more sympathetic figures, such as the priest who fought to allow families to remain together on one of the Maryland plantations and to raise and sell their own crops. Swarns also traces the family lines of the Mahoney family, beginning in the 17th century with a matriarch who was unjustly enslaved after being assured she could live as an indentured servant, leading up to sisters Anna and Louisa, one of whom was sold to a Louisiana plantation in 1838 while the other remained in Maryland, and then on to their present-day descendants. Both lively and scrupulously documented, the book brings to light a previously unknown piece of the history of slavery in the U.S. A balanced, comprehensively researched account of a grim period.
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October 16, 2023
Swarns (American Tapestry) outlines a methodical timeline for the events leading up to the unconscionable sale of 272 innocent men, women, and children. In Maryland, 1838, the first Jesuit province in the U.S. was charged with securing much-needed funding for its most prestigious school, Georgetown University. At the time, Jesuit priests reportedly owned various tobacco, corn, or wheat plantations across the state of Maryland, encompassing thousands of acres and hundreds of enslaved people. Under orders from Rome, it was decided that the best option for saving the university from bankruptcy was to sell 272 enslaved laborers literally down the river to "good plantations"" in Louisiana. There, they were subjected to the bullwhip and one of the cruelest forced-labor systems in human history--all to fund Georgetown University. Swarns unravels the paper trail that eventually leads to the sale of these enslaved men, women, and their children, for which the university later apologizes and attempts to make amends. With empathy and meticulous care, Swarns lays bare the hard truths surrounding the sale. Most importantly, she delves into what it must have felt like for these 272 people to be betrayed by men of the very faith they were taught would be their salvation, followed by the overwhelmingly great despair of being hunted down like animals while trying to escape their fates. This book is essential reading.
COPYRIGHT(2023) Booklist, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.