In a moving ceremony on Tuesday, Georgetown University officially renamed two of its campus buildings after people it sold into slavery in the 1800s.
“We pray with you today because we have greatly sinned and because we are profoundly sorry,” said Rev. Timothy Kesicki, president of the Jesuit Conference of Canada and the United States, at a Georgetown chapel. “Forgiveness is yours to bestow in your time and in your way.”
In 1838, Georgetown sold 272 people to a plantation in order to pay off a large debt. Many of the people were already enslaved by some of the university’s Jesuit priests, but the Louisiana plantation they were sold to had even worse conditions. On Tuesday, the descendants of these people gathered at a university chapel as the school seeks forgiveness.
