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The Center for the Study of Slavery and its Legacies will be creating a periodic newsletter to share news and updates. Visit the sign up page to share your contact information.

Upcoming Activities

We’ve got some exciting upcoming events for you to put on your calendar. More information coming soon.

Recent Activities

• In April 2024, Lauinger Library opened an exhibit of student artwork reflecting on Georgetown’s history of slavery and its legacies. Facing Georgetown’s History Through Art will be on display on the 4th floor of Lauinger Library through October 1, 2024.
• In March 2024, Professor Carlos Simon performed his Grammy-nominated Requiem for the Enslaved at the Kennedy Center, and Mélisande Short-Colomb performed Here I Am at Loyola University Maryland.
• In February 2024, Philosopher Julia Jorati (University of Massachusetts Amherst) discussed her new book, Slavery and Race: Philosophical Debates in the Eighteenth Century, and community members helped transcribe correspondence from the Frederick Douglass Papers at the Library of Congress for Douglass Day.
• In the spring 2024 semester, Georgetown PhD candidates presented papers:
  • George Clay presented his paper “Slavery, Empire, and Emotional Politics in Cartagena de Indias and Providence Island, 1620-1650”.
  • Claire Steele presented her paper “The Final Voyage of the Whydah: Histories and Legacies of Slavery and Piracy Across the Atlantic”.
• In October 2023, Georgetown hosted a book event with Rachel L. Swarns, author of The 272: The Families Who Were Enslaved and Sold to Build the American Catholic Church.
• On September 19, 2023, the Center’s launch event featured a live musical performance of “Requiem for the Enslaved.”
• In September 2023, Center Director and Professor Adam Rothman participated in a webinar conversation on Slavery, Child-family Separation, and the Catholic Church in the United States; and a panel discussion about Out of the Vineyard, a play based on the historical book “A Question of Freedom: The Families who Challenged Slavery from the Nation’s Founding to Civil War” by William G. Thomas III.
• Labor Day weekend 2023, members of the Descendant community participated in gatherings throughout Southern Maryland as part of an initiative hosted by The Reclamation Project. The Reclamation Project’s Southern Maryland Descendant Gathering initiative was one of the first grant recipients as part of Georgetown’s Reconciliation Fund. 
• In August 2023, Center Director and Professor Adam Rothman joined a panel during New Student Orientation to share Georgetown’s history with incoming undergraduate students.
• In April 2023, in honor of D.C. Emancipation Day 2023, the Center hosted an interactive event for participants to transcribe archival runaway slave advertisements from the Georgetown neighborhood, collected from 18th and 19th-century newspapers. This process of archival transcription is foundational for research to better understand the lives of enslaved people and the world they lived in.

What We’re Reading

• Collins, David J. The Jesuits in the United States: A Concise History. Washington, D.C.: Georgetown University Press, 2023.
• Endres, David J., et al. Slavery and the Catholic Church in the United States: Historical Studies. Washington, DC: The Catholic University of America Press, 2023.
• Swarns, Rachel L. The 272: The Families Who Were Enslaved and Sold to Build the American Catholic Church. New York: Random House, 2023.
• Wingert, Cooper. “Fugitive Slave Renditions and the Proslavery Crisis of Confidence in Federalism, 1850–1860”. The Journal of American History 110:1 (2023): 40–57.

Visit our resources page to find a list of relevant books, articles, and videos.

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