Students at Georgetown University in Washington DC have voted in favour of paying reparations to the descendants of enslaved people who were sold by Jesuit founders to pay off college debts.

In 1838, Georgetown Jesuits sold 272 people who worked on plantations in Maryland. Slavery was abolished in the US in 1865, after the civil war. Debate over whether descendants of enslaved people should receive reparations is longstanding. The idea has been discussed on a national stage this year, among candidates for the Democratic presidential nomination.

Results released on Friday showed two-thirds of Georgetown undergraduates who voted in a non-binding referendum said payments should be funded in their case by a fee that would apply to all undergraduate students.

Richard Cellini, founder of the Georgetown Memory Project, which has raised money to identify thousands of descendants of the people sold in 1838, told the Guardian the vote was “momentous”.

“It makes me very proud of the students,” he said. “My guess is that the university will do what it’s always done, which is soft-talk and slow-walk this, but I hope I’m wrong.”

What’s impressive about the students is that they acted … They put their money where their mouth was. Richard Cellini

In an open letter to “Members of the Georgetown University community”, the college president, John DeGioia, said: “Over the past four years, we have been working to respond to Georgetown’s historical relationship to the institution of slavery and engaging with members of the Descendant community of the enslaved people of the Maryland Jesuit plantations.



“Yesterday, our undergraduate students voted on a student referendum proposing the idea of a fund for Descendants created by a new student fee that would apply to all undergraduate students.”

Noting that the favourable vote was non-binding, he said: “This moment raises complex issues that we are prepared to grapple with and embrace. Our students are bringing attention to deeply held convictions that we take very seriously.”

DeGioia said he would “engage key leaders in our Georgetown, Descendant and Jesuit communities and our faculty, board, and student leadership to chart a path forward”.

He also noted college “efforts” on the matter since 2015 that he said had “begun the work of memorializing and reconciling the legacies of slavery that have shaped our community and our nation on the issue”.

These included a 2016 meeting with “descendants of the children, women, and men enslaved on Maryland plantations and sold by the Maryland Jesuits in 1838”; a formal apology for “our participation in the evil of slavery”, made in 2017; and “a new process of engagement that is helping us to develop a long-term framework for dialogue and collaboration among our communities”, begun in 2018.

DeGioia said the university was now “pursuing work that is uncharted” and “forging a new path towards reconciliation.

“This work requires the best of our energies and the commitment of time,” he said. “The transformation that is invited in this moment will not happen immediately or easily.”

Cellini said DeGioia’s letter was “filled with jargon”.

“What’s impressive about the students,” he said, “is that they affirmatively and proactively acted. They did something. They put their money where their mouth was.”

Cellini, who said he was a moderate Republican, said he had no personal connection to the history of the “Georgetown 272”, other than his undergraduate and law degrees.

“We believe Georgetown University and the Maryland Jesuits owe reparations and restitution to the descendants of their former slaves,” he said, adding that one of the school’s dormitories, which he said generates more than $1m in revenue every year, was built and paid for with the proceeds of the 1838 sales of enslaved people.

“This isn’t about something that happened a long time ago,” Cellini said. “It’s not a question about whether the past is the past. At Georgetown, the connection to slavery isn’t a legacy. It’s a modern-day income stream.”