Enable High Contrast Mode
Disable High Contrast Mode
May 1, 2025
“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. Within weeks after the article appeared, activists had established the Georgetown Memory Project to investigate the sale, while administrators scrambled to address the growing controversy. But Swarns knew that she had not told the full story.
A Howard University alumna, Swarns had previously explored the story of Michelle Obama’s enslaved ancestors in her book American Tapestry. She recognized that her article captured the rough contours of the Georgetown tragedy, but it lacked the layers of detail and nuance necessary to reveal the full humanity of the human beings at the heart of the sale. Swarns spent seven years methodically retracing the steps of the families who had been sold by Jesuit leaders and given up for dead. She explored archives on both sides of the Atlantic, examining “tattered receipts, fraying ledger books, wills, property records,” and oral histories, to animate the lives of these families. The result is The 272, a powerful, poignant portrayal of one family’s suffering and resilience, as well as a clear-eyed indictment of Catholic priests who abandoned their principles to advance the financial interests of the Church.
Washington History, Spring 2025.