'Let Us Go Free' - Slavery and Jesuit Universities in America

"The Society of Jesus (the Jesuits) are renowned for the quality of their universities and colleges. Less well known is the relationship between Jesuit higher education and slavery. For more than two hundred years Jesuit colleges and seminaries supported themselves on the labor of the enslaved--in Maryland (Georgetown), Missouri (St Louis University), Kentucky (St Joseph College), Louisiana (Grand Coteau seminary), and Alabama (Spring Hill College). Even the founding of Xavier University in the free state of Ohio depended upon income from the labor of the enslaved in Kentucky. Walker Gollar shows that, in spite of their Catholic faith, Jesuits were in most respects very typical slaveholders. They sometimes worried about the spiritual and physical wellbeing of the enslaved, but they mostly were concerned with the finances of their plantations and farms. This book, deeply based on research in the Jesuit archives, provides a vivid and disquieting narrative of Jesuit slaveholding for the general reader and the student. To the extent possible, it portrays the experiences of the enslaved, including the destruction of family ties and punishment but also resistance and emancipation. Gollar also traces the legacies of the Jesuits' participation in the slave economy, including the perspectives of the descendants of those enslaved by the Jesuits and the Jesuits' attempts to come to terms with the actions and beliefs of their predecessors"--

About the author

C. Walker Gollar is professor of church history in the Department of Theology at Xavier University in Cincinnati. He specializes in the history of American Catholicism. He is the author of American and Catholic: Stories of the People who Built the Church (2015).

Product details

• Authors: C. Walker Gollar, C.walker Gollar
• Publisher: Georgetown University Press
• Languages: English
• Product format: Paperback / Softback
• Released: 01.02.2024
• EAN: 9781647123864
• ISBN: 978-1-64712-386-4
• No. of pages: 416
• Subjects: Humanities, art, music > History > Modern era up to 1918; Non-fiction book > Philosophy, religion > Religion: general, reference works; USA, RELIGION / Christianity / Catholic, SOCIAL SCIENCE / Slavery, United States of America, USA, Roman Catholicism, Roman Catholic Church, Slavery & abolition of slavery, Higher & further education, tertiary education, Higher education, tertiary education, Slavery and abolition of slavery, EDUCATION / Schools / Levels / Higher