Descendants of GU272 follow in ancestors’ footsteps on ‘Old Town Spiritual Walk’ – The Catholic Standard

Hawkins, Pike, Mahoney and Mason are just a few of the surnames held by hundreds of descendants of people who were enslaved by Jesuit priests in Maryland during colonial times and the early decades of the U.S. On June 19, 1838, Jesuit Maryland signed a contract to sell 272 enslaved men, women and children, now known as GU272.

Julie Hawkins Ennis, founder of Southern Maryland Voices LLC and organizer of the walk, spoke to several dozen descendants and other participants outside the Freedom House Museum on Duke Street in Alexandria, Virginia, on the morning of June 20, the day after the Juneteenth Freedom Day anniversary. Ironically, June 19 is both the date the Jesuits signed the sale deed in 1838 and the day in 1865 now known as Juneteenth when emancipation was announced to enslaved black Americans in Galveston, Texas, more than two months after the end of the Civil War and more than two years after President Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation.

“That was the day the Jesuits made a deal with the sugar plantation owners… they made a deal to sell over 272 people from Southern Maryland to the sugar plantations. It was literally hell,” Hawkins Ennis said. “How could this happen? Georgetown was financially bankrupt, it was getting ready to close, and it needed money.”

In 2019, her son was a student at Gonzaga University High School, a Jesuit preparatory school in Washington, D.C., when he learned he was a descendant of slaves owned by the Jesuits.

“I tried to pull him away, but I didn’t, and it just came back because of the way I was raised. Being Catholic wasn’t just a religion, it was a way of life for us,” Hawkins Ennis said. “Even though all this happened, there were good things that came from being Catholic… I’m still a Catholic, so today I decided to follow in their footsteps and go see where they were being held.”

Freedom House in Old Town Alexandria is now a museum surrounded by tenement buildings, but according to museum educator Karen Wilkins, the building was once used to traffic men, women and children into “the largest and most profitable slave trading business in the United States” from 1828 to 1851.

Leading up to the pilgrimage, Ms. Wilkins, who guided the descendants around the museum, told them about Isaac Franklin, John Armfield and Rice Ballard, all of whom were important partners in the domestic slave trade in the United States. She spoke of how plantations in the Southern United States harvested crops of sugarcane, cotton, rice and indigo. The South was once known as the “cotton kings.” “They supplied about two-thirds of the cotton, not just for the United States, but for the world,” she said.

Wilkins went on to explain the function of Freedom House and how slaves were housed in “outdoor enclosures” on either side of the building. He said the city recently approved restoration of the building during what he called a “critical period,” including closing off non-existent windows to better replicate how it functioned in the 1800s.

After a short stroll through the museum, the group returned outside to begin a spiritual walk of just over a mile from Freedom House to the waterfront, the path their ancestors walked before boarding the Katherine Jackson, where a replica of the ship’s manifest is on display.

At the water’s edge, Melisande Colombe, a research and community engagement associate at Georgetown University’s Institute for Global Performance and Politics, poured water.

After the libation, the names on the register were read out.

“The libation is an acknowledgment of our connection to our ancestors. The libation can be pure water or alcohol, but we just choose water. Water ties it all together. When Franklin and Armfield were in business, when human trafficking was the American program, they traveled by water. Everything was by water,” Colombe said. Catholic StandardsNames of GU272 descendants connected to her family include Queen and Mahoney, but she thinks there may be others.

Colombe said education about this history needs to be improved going forward.

“I hope Americans will learn more about America and who we are as Americans. We have a tendency, with a generous heart, to ignore our own problems and go out into the world and appoint ourselves as the people who will right the world’s wrongs,” Colombe said.

Julie Hawkins Ennis standard
This was her second time on the walk, but the first time she walked from Freedom House to the pier she was with Gonzaga University students and social studies teacher Edward Donnellan.

“They (our ancestors) followed the same footsteps that we did to get here, to this pier. Can you imagine that? It’s sad,” said Hawkins Ennis, who grew up in southern Maryland and has lived in Maryland and the Washington, D.C., area, reflecting on how much history she’s learned about the popular site in recent years.

“We came here to eat. I used to work not far from here. I used to walk up and down Duke Street almost every day. I had no idea this was where slaves walked. I didn’t even know this was a slave port. We didn’t know,” Hawkins Ennis said. “It’s amazing to me that we’re standing on sacred ground. It’s funny, it seems like everywhere I go in this area there’s some kind of connection to the DMV. It’s so magical. It’s like my ancestors sent me to discover these places.”