ST. LOUIS — A local partnership between the Jesuits and ºüÀêÊÓƵ University to research their history of slaveholding, including finding and reconciling with descendants, has been quietly downsized to a staff of one priest.
“I am alone now,†said the Rev. Jeffrey Harrison, coordinator of the . “I do what I can. I am trying to keep the lights on.â€
Lines in the Jesuit mission’s original ledger of 1836, now housed at the Jesuit Archives and Research Center, show payments made by Matilda Tyler to purchase her own freedom. Records of enslaved people were kept with the first Jesuit missionaries, who arrived in Missouri in 1823.
The project started in 2016 as a well-publicized commitment to learn the lived stories of the people enslaved by the Jesuits in the ºüÀêÊÓƵ area and what is now the Jesuit Central and Southern Province.
With the help of about half a dozen staff based here, the project went on to verify the names of 74 people enslaved by the Jesuits in Missouri between 1823 and 1865, and dozens more in Kentucky and Louisiana. Others have been identified who may not have been directly owned by the Jesuits but were under their control.
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The project sent out about 100 letters to descendant households, each one creating a range of reactions, from anger to gratitude.
“Many of the descendants didn’t know they were descendants until we told them,†Harrison said.
But the project isn’t sending out letters anymore. Research has largely fallen off.
In mid-2021, contracts weren’t renewed for research staff and leaders of the project. Also that year, Jonathan Smith, vice president for diversity and community engagement at ºüÀêÊÓƵ University, who co-directed the project, died suddenly. The COVID-19 pandemic also took a toll.
Today, Harrison said he sustains contacts with about two dozen descendants while trying to figure out the best way to teach the full history they’ve unearthed. He said some still struggle to believe Jesuits used slave labor to further the mission.
“We are not going to have racial harmony by ignoring the past,†he said.
Though he was in Alabama last summer, trying to find more names in church sacramental records, he’s also a parish priest at St. Matthew the Apostle Catholic Church in the Ville neighborhood.
“Now that I have this parish, it’s much harder to get away and travel,†he said.
The Jesuits, a Roman Catholic religious order that works around the globe, said it is still committed to the mission of the Slavery, History, Memory and Reconciliation Project, but it’s being folded into a broader effort being developed that’s more unified and eliminates overlap.
“The project became bigger and larger in scope than ºüÀêÊÓƵ because Jesuit slaveholding was bigger than ºüÀêÊÓƵ,†said the Rev. Brian Paulson, president of the Jesuit Conference of Canada and the United States.
Speaking by phone from Belize, he added: “What they were hired for, to do the research on the descendants in the Missouri area, they completed that phase of the research.â€
Jesuit pioneers like Pierre-Jean De Smet first brought six slaves with them in 1823 from White Marsh Plantation, in Maryland, to establish a mission in Missouri. They were mainly forced to work at the university, its church and St. Stanislaus Seminary, which initially operated as a farm in the Florissant area.
Many others stayed in Maryland or were sold off as Jesuit assets. Research shows that 272 slaves were sold and shipped to Louisiana in 1838 to finance Georgetown University and invest in the formation of more priests there, a story which generated protests and national news coverage in recent years. It also spurred the creation of the , which is tasked to “invest heavily in dismantling the remnants of slavery and mitigating racism.â€
“The descendants chose to deal with the Jesuits and the Catholic Church. We chose a moral route to truth and reconciliation because we felt there are no legal possibilities here,†Joseph Stewart, foundation president, said in a telephone interview from Florida. “If we are successful, then the Jesuits and the Catholic Church can be an example for the entire nation.â€
Fundraising falls short
While the foundation wasn’t formed to make direct payments to descendants, of which there are thousands, it plans to invest in education for descendants, support indigent senior citizens and provide resources to address race-based problems in communities — once it’s funded.
In 2021, the Jesuits vowed to raise $100 million for the foundation, with a longer-term goal of raising $1 billion to help reconcile with its history of slaveholding. But the foundation hasn’t surpassed an initial $15 million donation from the Jesuits.
“There is not a lot more to show. I’ll be honest with you,†Paulson, the Jesuit conference president and a foundation board member, told the Post-Dispatch on Tuesday. He added: “We are working on a couple major cornerstone gifts that we hope will give renewed momentum to that campaign.â€
The Jesuits have also vowed to dedicate proceeds from the sale of former plantation lands to the foundation. That hasn’t happened yet. Paulson said it’s a complex effort that involves a lot of entities.
“That painstaking work is going on right now,†he said.
In an August 2022 letter, Stewart, the foundation president, voiced frustration to the Jesuit superior general in Rome about the slow pace of fundraising. Stewart told the Post-Dispatch that the letter still hasn’t led to increased capital coming in, but more urgency and planning are taking place.
“He is committed,†Stewart said of Paulson and the Jesuits. “I trust that. I am not satisfied with the results we are getting from that commitment. We are working on that. They are working on that, too.â€
Stewart, 80, a fifth-generation grandson of Isaac Hawkins, who was sold in 1838 to support Georgetown University, said he’s aware that research efforts in ºüÀêÊÓƵ have slowed considerably. He said he supports a new Jesuit initiative in the works to establish “one major conduit†that effectively identifies and reconnects all descendants with roots in Maryland.
Peter Queen, also known as Peter Hawkins or Peter Queen-Hawkins, is shown in the early 1900s. Queen was born to an enslaved couple in 1824 in a one-room log cabin at the former St. Stanislaus Seminary in the Florissant area. The cabin housed seven slaves and doubled as a kitchen and wash house for the Jesuit community living there.
“This is part of the dilemma of bringing us back together after 200 years,†said Stewart, who grew up in Louisiana where his ancestors worked the land. “People do have feelings about who they are and what group they came from. It’s about all descendants of Jesuit enslavement, not any one group based on geography.â€
He said the focus now is on funding.
“The greatest priority is to get the capitalization of the foundation in place,†he said. “Without the capitalization, there is no instrument to serve the present and future generations of descendants even after we have identified all of them.â€
Rashonda Alexander, of ºüÀêÊÓƵ, poses with a portrait of her grandfather, John O. Tilghman, outside of St. Francis Xavier College Church on the ºüÀêÊÓƵ University campus on Sept. 10, 2020. Alexander is a direct descendant of enslaved people owned by Jesuits who ran the university she later paid to attend.
Rashonda Alexander, 43, of ºüÀêÊÓƵ, said she wanted the research to continue in earnest in the ºüÀêÊÓƵ area, as well as more presentations and efforts to explore and tell the stories that have been tediously pieced together from church and court records.
“If reconciliation is really the end goal, it should be ongoing,†she said.
She believes the research is incomplete. She didn’t receive one of the 100 notification letters saying she was a descendant. A reporter referred her to the project in 2021, which then confirmed she was a descendant of Jack and Sally Queen, who were forced to Missouri from Maryland in 1829.
“There are a lot more families who may just not know,†she said.
Alexander was raised Catholic and continues to practice her faith. She’s an active member of St. Nicholas Catholic Church in the city. She has significant student loans from earning a bachelor’s degree from ºüÀêÊÓƵ University. She hopes details will be figured out in time so her children, 5- and 7-year-old descendants, can attend Jesuit schools for free some day.
“It’s difficult to understand this perspective of quietly going away or not facing the injustice head-on because that’s what the Jesuits are known for,†she said.
Other independent efforts to find and connect with living descendants are underway.
In 2021, Robin Proudie helped found the Descendants of the ºüÀêÊÓƵ University Enslaved. She said the organization has about 25 descendant volunteers trying to identify others. She said they’ve contacted hundreds thus far, many of which are receptive and eager to know more.
Proudie said she’s planning to speak about the organization’s efforts and mission at colleges and universities. They aren’t as concerned with what’s going on nationally with other organizations centered around descendants of those enslaved by Jesuits.
“Our focus right now is to stand up our organization so that we can honor our ancestors and educate the public,†Proudie said.
After a website launch this spring, she said, they’ll focus on fundraising efforts to hire researchers and genealogists to help verify living descendants. That, she says, will also aid their argument for reparations.
Post-Dispatch reporter Taylor Tiamoyo Harris contributed to this report.
Originally posted at 7 a.m. Friday, Feb. 17.
Family, friends, historians, and community members came together to dedicate the headstone of Sylvester Chauvin. After being born into slavery in 1860, he eventually became a star baseball player for the ºüÀêÊÓƵ Black Stockings.
