Resources

Websites and Online Databases

Georgetown University Library Resources

Books

Colbert, Soyica Diggs, Robert J. Patterson, and Aida Levy-Hussen. The Psychic Hold of Slavery: Legacies in American Expressive Culture. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 2016.

Collins, David J. The Jesuits in the United States: A Concise History. Washington, D.C.: Georgetown University Press, 2023.

Curran, Robert Emmett. “‘Splendid Poverty’: Jesuit Slave Holdings in Maryland, 1805-1838.” In Catholics in the Old South. Edited by Randall M. Miller and Jon L. Wakelyn. Macon, Georgia: Mercer University Press, 1983.

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.

Jackson, Maurice. “Washington, DC: From the Founding of a Slaveholding Capital to a Center of Abolitionism.” Journal of African Diaspora Archaeology & Heritage 2.1 (May 2013): 40-66.

Menzie Lesko, Kathleen, Valerie Babb, and Carroll R. Gibbs. Black Georgetown Remembered: A History of Its Black Community From the Founding of “The Town of George” in 1751 to the Present Day. Washington, DC: Georgetown UP, 2022.

Murphy, Thomas, S.J. Jesuit Slaveholding in Maryland, 1717-1838. Studies in African American History and Culture. New York: Routledge, 2001. 

Rothman, Adam, and Elsa Barraza Mendoza, editors. Facing Georgetown’s History: A Reader on Slavery, Memory, and Reconciliation. Georgetown University Press, 2021.

Swarns, Rachel L. The 272: The Families Who Were Enslaved and Sold to Build the American Catholic Church. New York: Random House, 2023.

Wilder, Craig Steven.  Ebony and Ivy: Race, Slavery, and the Troubled History of America’s Universities. New York: Bloomsbury Press, 2013.

Lesson plans

Three units of lesson plans for high school teachers on Slavery at School; Slavery and Catholicism; Putting a Human Face on the Domestic Slave Trade: The GU 272

Videos

A Slavery, Memory, and Reconciliation walking tour of Georgetown University, led by Georgetown students, as part of the 2025 New Student Orientation.

Inaugural events of the Center for the Study of Slavery and Its Legacies include a film screening of City of a Million Dreams and a music performance by the Dr. Michael White Quartet.

March 18, 2023
ICC Auditorium
Georgetown University

The logbook from the Slave Ship Mary, which was donated to Georgetown University Library in 2017, provides poignant and valuable insight into the Atlantic slave trade. In this video, Georgetown History Professor Adam Rothman and Alana Hendy (SFS ’21) discusses the logbook and its value, and Mary Beth Corrigan, manuscripts consultant in the Library’s Booth Family Center for Special Collections, discusses how the logbook came to Georgetown and how the library is working to preserve it.

On February 24, 2016 the University community gathered in Gaston Hall to commemorate “Black Georgetown Remembered,” which chronicles and celebrates the rich but little-known history of the Georgetown black community from the colonial period to the present. Drawing on primary sources, including oral interviews with past and current residents and extensive research in church and historical society archives, the authors record the hopes, dreams, disappointments, and successes of a vibrant neighborhood as it persevered through slavery and segregation, war and peace, prosperity and depression. This event celebrated the beautiful commemorative 25th anniversary edition of “Black Georgetown Remembered,” which was first published in 1991, with a new introduction by Kathleen Menzie Lesko and a foreword by Maurice Jackson.

Moderator: Maurice Jackson (Georgetown University) Panelists: Valerie Babb (University of Georgia), Kathleen Menzie Lesko (Huntington Library), Vernon H. Ricks, Jr (Mount Zion United Methodist Church), Monica Roaché (Georgetown’s Advisory Neighborhood Commission), and Neville Waters, III (Fifth Generation Georgetowner).