Georgetown University will give preferential treatment to “descendants of slaves” in its admissions process, in an effort to “make amends” with 272 slaves who were sold to benefit the university in 1838.
In a letter to students and faculty members Thursday, Georgetown president John DeGioia announced his administration will be giving “the same consideration we give to members of the Georgetown community” to descendants of slaves when they apply to the university. In other words, those specific applicants will receive priority in admissions relative to other applicants from outside the Georgetown community.
“We will also work to identify new ways to enhance access and opportunity for those who wish to attend college,” the letter reads.
Georgetown will identify and reach out to descendants of slaves and recruit them to the university. Several genealogists at the university, along with the New York Times and other organizations, have conducted research to identify the slaves from the 1838 sale, and followed their descendants’ footsteps to Maryland, New Orleans, and Louisiana. Maxine Crump, shown below, is one of the descendants they tracked:
The Georgetown Slavery Archive was created to provide genealogical information about the slaves who were sold, in order to help further identify their descendants.
Below is the university’s full report on the research:
DeGioia says this new admissions policy will serve as “the most appropriate way for us to redress the participation of our predecessors in the institution of slavery.” Giving a head start to the descendants of those slaves will help “address the manifestations of the legacy of slavery in our time.”
In addition to the new admissions measure, DeGioia says, the university will perform other measures to reach out to slaves’ descendants such as renaming a few halls with deemed racist titles, creating a 16-member Working Group of Slavery, Memory, and Reconciliation staffed with the descendants of slaves to make recommendations on how the university can make amends for its historical slave sale, and establish a research institute that will teach about the history of those slaves.
Some descendants have already reached out to the school themselves, Georgetown history professor Adam Rothman told CNN.
“It’s a diverse community, there are a lot of African American students, staff and faculty,” he said, adding that recognizing the contributions of “African American students” at Georgetown is “really important for bringing the whole university together.”
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