Group demands reparatory justice from U.S universities founded by Jesuits, others
A group, Descendants of the St. Louis Enslaved (DSLUE), has made a passionate call for reparatory justice for the unpaid slave labor of their ancestors who were used by the Jesuits to build major universities in the United States of America (USA), especially St. Louis University, Missouri, and George Town University, Washington, DC.
Founder of the group, Robin Proudie, who made the call at the Fourth Session of the United Nations (UN) Permanent Forum on People of African Descendant (UN PFPAD), which took place in New York from April 14 to 17, 2025, said this is essential because since “the harm was intergenerational and multi-dimensional, the repair must be equally comprehensive and sustained.”
Saint Louis University, a private Jesuit research university in St. Louis, Missouri, was founded in 1818 and is the second-oldest Jesuit university in the United States, while Georgetown University, another private Jesuit research university, founded in 1789, in Washington, D.C., is the oldest Catholic institution of higher education in the United States.
Proudie said she was speaking on behalf of descendants of African enslaved ancestors – “Proteus and Annie Hawkins-Queen, Charles and Henrietta Chauvin, Matilda Tyler, and generations more – trafficked by the Jesuits, a Catholic order of priests, who are the benefactors of local, national, and global systems of slavery since their origin in 1540.”
She said that “Jesuits and early European colonizers established religious and academic institutions on the backs of enslaved Africans -including my ancestors, who were forced to build and sustain Georgetown and Saint Louis University. Today, these institutions as well as Harvard, Yale, Brown, Princeton, and others – hold billions in endowments and land, while descendants and our communities still face disinvestment, generational poverty, and systemic disparities in health, education, and wealth.”
Stressing that DSLUE aligns itself with the reparatory justice frameworks set forth by the Caribbean Community (CARICOM), the African Union (AU), and the National African American Reparations Commission (NAARC), Proudie called on PFPAD to compel “all colleges and universities – particularly those who pulled themselves up by the bootstraps of African people” to make amends for the wrongs done to the ancestors of People of African Descent.
She stressed that DSLUE is demanding the “conduct of a full and public accounting of the economic value of the labor extracted – because stolen labor must be quantified to be justly repaired” and the creation of “permanent, descendant-led endowments that fund education, housing, healthcare, and generational wealth-building for the families whose ancestors were exploited to establish their wealth and prestige.”
They also insist that the universities must “acknowledge their role in structural inequality by investing in the communities where descendants live today – especially as many of these institutions remain tax-exempt, contributing nothing to neighborhoods still grappling with the aftershocks of enslavement and Jim Crow Apartheid.”
They equally stress that the institutions must “protect and exercise their First Amendment rights to tell the truth boldly – through public memorials, curriculum reform, and institutional accountability – pushing back against erasure and historical revisionism.”
