The 272 by Rachel L. Swarns

Banner image with Duane Library, the cover of the book The 272 and author Rachel Swarns
     

Thursday, October 12, 2023 
5:30 p.m.
Tognino Hall | Duane Library | 2nd Floor
Rose Hill Campus

Rachel Swarns will discuss her new book, The 272, which follows one family through nearly two centuries of indentured servitude and enslavement to illuminate the harrowing origin story of Georgetown University and the Catholic Church in the United States.

Through the saga of the Mahoney family, Swarns illustrates how the Church relied on slave labor and slave sales in Maryland to sustain its operations and to help finance its expansion. Torn apart by a Jesuit slave sale in 1838 and reunited by Swarns’ reporting in 2016, the Mahoney descendants have joined other GU272 descendants who have pressed Georgetown and the Catholic Church to make amends, prodding the institutions to break new ground in the movement for reparations and reconciliation in America.

Free and open to the public. Seating is limited. Registration is required.

Join Us!   
Questions? Contact:
Curran Center for American Catholic Studies
cacs@fordham.edu


Rachel L. Swarns is a journalism professor at New York University and a contributing writer for The New York Times, where she served as a reporter and correspondent for 22 years. She is the author of The 272: The Families Who Were Enslaved and Sold to Build the American Catholic Church; American Tapestry: The Story of the Black, White and Multiracial Ancestors of Michelle Obama and a co-author of Unseen: Unpublished Black History from the New York Times Photo Archives. Her work has been recognized and supported by the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Ford Foundation, the Biographers International Organization, the Leon Levy Center for Biography, the MacDowell artist residency program, and others. In 2023, she was elected to the Society of American Historians.

This event is co-sponsored by the Curran Center for American Catholic Studies, the Office of the Dean of Fordham College Rose Hill, the Office of the Dean of the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, and the Department of Theology.