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Featured Media | May 1, 2025
Book Review: The 272: The Families Who Were Enslaved and Sold to Build the American Catholic Church
Washington History Magazine – “272 Slaves Were Sold to Save Georgetown. What Does It Owe Their Descendants?” asked a front page New York Times headline in April 2016. Written by veteran Times correspondent Rachel Swarns, the article drew national attention to “#GU272,” a campus movement to memorialize the people sold by Georgetown University’s Jesuit leaders in 1838…But Swarns knew that she had not told the full story.
Featured Media | May 1, 2025
Book Review: The 272: The Families Who Were Enslaved and Sold to Build the American Catholic Church
Washington History Magazine – “272 Slaves Were Sold to Save Georgetown. What Does It Owe Their Descendants?” asked a front page New York Times headline in April 2016. Written by veteran Times correspondent Rachel Swarns, the article drew national attention to “#GU272,” a campus movement to memorialize the people sold by Georgetown University’s Jesuit leaders in 1838…But Swarns knew that she had not told the full story.
Podcast | December 6, 2024
Criminal Podcast, Episode 295: The Sale
In 1791, three men filed lawsuits in the General Court of Maryland. They were all suing the same person: the Jesuit priest who enslaved them. Listen to the Podcast Here
Podcast | July 16, 2024
The Jesuits sold 272 people into slavery. How can the church make amends with their descendants?
America Magazine – This week on “Jesuitical,” Zac and Ashley are joined by journalist Rachel Swarns to discuss her latest book, The 272: The Families Who Were Enslaved and Sold to Build the American Catholic Church. Rachel shares her wisdom about this important issue for U.S. Catholics and her experience as a Black Catholic, opening up a wide-ranging conversation about the work being done to repair such a grave injustice and promote racial justice in the church.
Article | July 1, 2024
Book Review: The 272: The Families Who Were Enslaved and Sold to Build the American Catholic Church
US Catholic Historian – The 272 opens on a phone call. Melissa Kemp called Jeremy Alexander just before Thanksgiving in 2016 “because she believed that they had a common ancestor, an enslaved woman who had been born in Maryland and sold to Louisiana.”
Article | May 23, 2024
Book Review: How Bondage Built the Church
The New York Review of Books – Rachel Swarns’s recent book about a mass sale of enslaved people by Jesuit priests to save Georgetown University reminds us that the legacy of slavery is simultaneously the legacy of resistance.
Podcast | March 10, 2024
NYU professor, students expose the legacy of lynchings in the North
More than 4,000 Black people were murdered in brutal lynchings in the United States. Much of the stories told about these killings have centered around mob violence in the South. Now, a new project led by Professor Rachel Swarns of New York University is challenging that narrative, reminding people that this violence happened everywhere — even in New York.
Article | March 9, 2024
There Were Lynchings in the North, Too.
The New York Times – A new website and research project, “Lynchings in the North,” created by Professor Rachel Swarns of New York University, is examining the lives of victims of racial violence as part of the “Hidden Legacies” initiative.
Article | February 16, 2024
The 272 Author Raises Hope of Reconciliation from a Painful History of the Church and Slavery
The Catholic Standard – Raising public awareness about the role of slavery in building the U.S. Catholic Church and sparking hopes for racial justice and reconciliation…
Video | September 20, 2023
Is It Ever Too Late To Correct the Wrong?
CUNY-TV/Black America – In 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. Rachel L. Swarns joins host Carol Jenkins to discuss her latest book, “The 272: The Families Who Were Enslaved and Sold to Build the American Church”. A story of the American Catholic Church and one family’s will to survive.
Video | September 19, 2023
The Catholic Church and Slavery
WABC-New York – How the Catholic Church relied on the sale of slaves to expand its’ foothold in America.
Article | September 14, 2023
Book Review: The Shameful History of When the Jesuits Sold Enslaved People.
America Magazine – In 1838, the Maryland Province of the Society of Jesus, long a major slaveholder in the mid-Atlantic region, sold 272 of the men, women and children it owned to purchasers in Louisiana….
Article | August 31, 2023
It Stops You Cold: The 272 People Sold To Fund Georgetown
The Guardian – In 1676, a Black teenager named Ann Joice arrived on the shores of Maryland with hopes of a new life…
Article | August 29, 2023
How the U.S. Catholic Church Profited from Slavery
U.S. Catholic Magazine – In ‘The 272,’ Rachel Swarns recounts how the Jesuit order relied on slave sales to finance their expansion and build the U.S. church as we know it today.
Article | July 28, 2023
Book Review: Slaves of Georgetown
The Wall Street Journal – In November 1838, a sad if familiar scene played out on the docks of Alexandria, Va., as slave traders herded scores of enslaved men, women and children onto a ship bound for cotton plantations in faraway Louisiana…
Podcast | July 26, 2023
Exploring the Untold Stories of Families Enslaved in Louisiana
WWNO New Orleans Public Radio – This Saturday, the East Baton Rouge Parish Library will hold a day-long symposium examining the efforts of genealogists to uncover the untold stories of families enslaved in Louisiana. Much of the symposium will be based on research by Rachel Swarns…
Article | July 13, 2023
Book Review: An Intimate Account of the Enslaved People Sold to Save Georgetown
Washington Post – It was through Rachel Swarns’s reporting…in the New York Times that many Americans came to know that the Jesuits not only owned enslaved people but also sold human property to pay the debts of one of the most prestigious universities in the country. In her new book, Swarns relays the hard facts of these atrocities and weaves together extensive research, data, letters and oral histories to bring forth an intimate family story.
Video | July 8, 2023
Author Rachel Swarns Discusses Her New Book
NY1 – A new book dives into the dark history of the Catholic church and follows the enslavement of 272 Black Americans by Jesuit priests in 1838.
Article | July 7, 2023
Georgetown Was Trying to Atone for its Past in the Slave Trade. Now What?
Politico Magazine – When Rachel Swarns first learned of the sale, she was “flabbergasted.” The former New York Times correspondent had been writing about the legacy of slavery when she discovered something that shocked her as a Black Catholic woman…
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