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July 7, 2023
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: In 1838, the Jesuit order in Maryland — the first major Catholic institution in the U.S. — sold almost 300 enslaved people to fund its new school, what is now Georgetown University, alma mater of several members of Congress, as well as late Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia and former President Bill Clinton.
Politico Magazine, July 2023.