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Summary
Summary
"An absolutely essential addition to the history of the Catholic Church, whose involvement in New World slavery sustained the Church and, thereby, helped to entrench enslavement in American society."-Annette Gordon-Reed, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Hemingses of Monticello and On Juneteenth
New York Times Book Review Editors' Choice .Longlisted for the Andrew Carnegie Medal
A BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR- The New Yorker, The New York Times Book Review, The Washington Post, Time, Chicago Public Library, Kirkus Reviews
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. In this groundbreaking account, journalist, author, and professor Rachel L. Swarns follows one family through nearly two centuries of indentured servitude and enslavement to uncover the harrowing origin story of the Catholic Church in the United States. Through the saga of the Mahoney family, Swarns illustrates how the Church relied on slave labor and slave sales to sustain its operations and to help finance its expansion.
The story begins with Ann Joice, a free Black woman and the matriarch of the Mahoney family. Joice sailed to Maryland in the late 1600s as an indentured servant, but her contract was burned and her freedom stolen. Her descendants, who were enslaved by Jesuit priests, passed down the story of that broken promise for centuries. One of those descendants, Harry Mahoney, saved lives and the church's money in the War of 1812, but his children, including Louisa and Anna, were put up for sale in 1838. One daughter managed to escape, but the other was sold and shipped to Louisiana. Their descendants would remain apart until Rachel Swarns's reporting in The New York Times finally reunited them. They would go on to join other GU272 descendants who pressed Georgetown and the Catholic Church to make amends, prodding the institutions to break new ground in the movement for reparations and reconciliation in America.
Swarns's journalism has already started a national conversation about universities with ties to slavery. The 272 tells an even bigger story, not only demonstrating how slavery fueled the growth of the American Catholic Church but also shining a light on the enslaved people whose forced labor helped to build the largest religious denomination in the nation.
Author Notes
Rachel L. Swarns is a journalism professor at New York University and a contributing writer for The New York Times. She is the author of American Tapestry and a co-author of Unseen . Her work has been recognized and supported by the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Ford Foundation, the Biographers International Organization, the Leon Levy Center for Biography, the MacDowell artist residency program, and others.
Reviews (5)
Publisher's Weekly Review
NYU journalism professor Swarns (American Tapestry) expands on her 2016 New York Times article in this immersive and doggedly reported account, which reveals how the 1838 sale of 272 enslaved men, women, and children saved the debt-ridden Jesuit college now known as Georgetown University. In devastating detail, Swarns traces the sale's impact on the families of Anna and Louisa Mahoney, sisters who labored on a Jesuit-owned plantation in St. Mary's County, Md., until Anna and her children were sold to a plantation in Louisiana. Thanks to DNA testing and Swarns's reporting, their descendants reunited nearly two centuries later. Intertwined with the Mahoney family story is Swarns's searing investigation into the Catholic Church's deep involvement in American slavery, which has fueled debates at Georgetown and other colleges and universities about what the Church owes to the descendants of those whose labor and sale value bolstered its financial, political, and spiritual power in America. Swarns makes excellent use of archival sources to recreate the lives of the enslaved families and the circumstances of the sale, which was fiercely opposed by some Jesuit priests at the time. It's a powerful reminder of how firmly the roots of slavery are planted in America's soil. (June)
Booklist Review
Swarns (American Tapestry) outlines a methodical timeline for the events leading up to the unconscionable sale of 272 innocent men, women, and children. In Maryland, 1838, the first Jesuit province in the U.S. was charged with securing much-needed funding for its most prestigious school, Georgetown University. At the time, Jesuit priests reportedly owned various tobacco, corn, or wheat plantations across the state of Maryland, encompassing thousands of acres and hundreds of enslaved people. Under orders from Rome, it was decided that the best option for saving the university from bankruptcy was to sell 272 enslaved laborers literally down the river to "good plantations" in Louisiana. There, they were subjected to the bullwhip and one of the cruelest forced-labor systems in human history--all to fund Georgetown University. Swarns unravels the paper trail that eventually leads to the sale of these enslaved men, women, and their children, for which the university later apologizes and attempts to make amends. With empathy and meticulous care, Swarns lays bare the hard truths surrounding the sale. Most importantly, she delves into what it must have felt like for these 272 people to be betrayed by men of the very faith they were taught would be their salvation, followed by the overwhelmingly great despair of being hunted down like animals while trying to escape their fates. This book is essential reading.
Choice Review
With this study, Swarns (journalism, New York Univ.) makes a significant contribution to the historiography of the Jesuits in the US and of slavery in Maryland. Beginning in the colonial period, she tells of Ann Joice, who arrived in Maryland in the 1670s as a free Black woman only to have her indenture papers burned, leading to her enslavement and that of her descendants. By the early 1800s, these descendants were toiling on Maryland's Jesuit-owned plantations. The priests had hopes of supporting Roman Catholic education in the US through plantation profits, but economic crises, financial mismanagement, and other issues constantly threatened their mission. Eventually, Frs. Thomas F. Mulledy and William McSherry arranged a mass sale of 272 enslaved people to save the struggling Georgetown College, sending some of the enslaved as far away as Louisiana. Swarns addresses modern-day efforts to recognize the sacrifices of the enslaved while also uniting descendants of the 1838 sale. Compellingly written, this story will appeal to casual readers and scholars alike, shedding greater light on the history of the Jesuit mission, the priests who led it, and the enslaved people who gave it their lives. Summing Up: Highly recommended. General readers through faculty; professionals. --Tammy Kae Byron, Dalton State College
Kirkus Review
A probing examination of the causes and aftermath of the sale of 272 people enslaved by Catholic priests in 1838. Swarns, a New York Times contributor and NYU journalism professor, expands on a story she published in the Times in 2016, in which she explored the sale of people enslaved by the Jesuit order in Maryland to plantation owners in Louisiana. The proceeds--approximately $4.5 million in today's dollars--were used to fund Georgetown University (then College) as well as Holy Cross in Massachusetts and Loyola College in Baltimore. The author smoothly weaves together the stories of the priests who, beginning in the 18th century, supervised plantations in Maryland, collectively becoming "one of the largest enslavers in Maryland," and the families they enslaved, whose stories were passed down to their descendants. She carefully analyzes the economic rationales for both owning and ultimately selling the enslaved people, contrasting the monetary data with the devastating personal impacts of the sales, relocation, and enslavement of the people involved. Her careful look at the Jesuit hierarchy reveals both villains--e.g., the Georgetown president who squandered money and paid little attention to the lives of those sold to raise funds for the college--and more sympathetic figures, such as the priest who fought to allow families to remain together on one of the Maryland plantations and to raise and sell their own crops. Swarns also traces the family lines of the Mahoney family, beginning in the 17th century with a matriarch who was unjustly enslaved after being assured she could live as an indentured servant, leading up to sisters Anna and Louisa, one of whom was sold to a Louisiana plantation in 1838 while the other remained in Maryland, and then on to their present-day descendants. Both lively and scrupulously documented, the book brings to light a previously unknown piece of the history of slavery in the U.S. A balanced, comprehensively researched account of a grim period. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Library Journal Review
NYU journalism professor Swarns (American Tapestry: The Story of the Black, White, and Multiracial Ancestors of Michelle Obama) presents a sobering examination of the causes and ramifications of the 1838 U.S. sale of 272 people enslaved by Jesuit priests. The proceeds of the sale were used to support Georgetown College, now known as Georgetown University. Expanding upon a 2016 story she wrote for the New York Times, Swarns reveals that for more than a century, the Jesuit order used the proceeds from buying and selling enslaved people to fund its buildings, sustain its clergy, and drive expansion. Swarns's work centers on Jeremy Alexander and Melissa Kemp, who learned about their common ancestors, Anna and Louisa Mahoney, sisters who were separated by the 1838 sale. Their inquiries initiated heated discussions regarding reparations for descendants of people enslaved to keep the institution afloat. Narrator Karen Murray's somber, solid reading impressively conveys the significance of this vital work. VERDICT A powerfully told story about the little-known connections between the Catholic Church and the people they trafficked. Pair with Ana Lucia Araujo's Reparations for Slavery and the Slave Trade or Nikole Hannah-Jones's The 1619 Project. Highly recommended for all libraries.--Dale Farris