In the annals of racial reckoning, Georgetown University’s public atonement for its historical links to slavery has attracted special attention and generous praise.
Since the student newspaper jolted the campus with accounts of Jesuit priests engineering the sale of 272 enslaved people in 1838 to stave off bankruptcy for the college, Georgetown has honored campus buildings after an enslaved black laborer and a black Catholic educator, and pledged funding for health clinics and local schools. The prestigious institution now offers preferred admissions status in perpetuity to descendants of people the Maryland Jesuits once owned.
“Take a bow, Georgetown University,” a Dallas Morning News columnist gushed in 2016. “When one of America’s most prominent universities takes a step—no matter how small—to atone for its role in slavery, history pivots.”…