Many of you know that five years ago Georgetown University formally apologized to the descendants of slaves held by the Jesuit order who were sold South to pay off the University’s debts. Many of the enslaved people were sold to planters in Louisiana. Now an exhibit is being mounted in Louisiana to explain what happened and what the outcome was. Here is a local press report on the exhibit:
A former Episcopal church in Donaldsonville, built in 1873 on land donated by a slave owner and Louisiana governor, is now home to a new, permanent exhibit that pays tribute to enslaved people who worked Louisiana’s sugarcane fields
It will open on the weekend of Juneteenth, the celebration of the end of slavery in the U.S.
“It’s dedicated to the enslaved people who were brought here and their descendants,” said Kathe Hambrick, curator of the exhibit.
Hambrick is also the founder of the River Road African American Museum in Donaldsonville; the former Episcopal church on Nicholls Street is now a campus of the museum.
The name of the exhibit is “GU272 and Ascension Parish: The Jesuit and Episcopal Connection to Slavery.” That references 272 enslaved people who Georgetown University’s Jesuit founders sold to two Louisiana sugarcane planters in 1838 to pay off the university’s debts.
The Jesuit order formally apologized in 2017 to the descendants of the enslaved.
One of the planters was Henry Johnson, who was Louisiana governor from 1824 to 1828. Johnson co-founded the Episcopal Church of Ascension in Donaldsonville and donated the property where the church was built.
It’s that connection that inspired Hambrick to choose the church as the site of the exhibit.
A formal opening is scheduled for June 18, with a reception beginning at 10 a.m., followed by a program at noon. Viewing of the exhibit, which includes permanent panels of information and virtual links to information from the Georgetown Slavery Archives, will follow until 2 p.m.
In the future, the exhibit will be available to see by appointment, by calling the River Road African American Museum at (225) 474-5553.
Hambrick said the Georgetown archives include plenty of information about the 272 enslaved people, but local residents wouldn’t necessarily know where to find it.
“I thought, ‘We’re going to make an exhibit’” she said.
Follow Reconstruction Blog on Social Media:
