{"id":60139,"date":"2020-09-11T02:22:09","date_gmt":"2020-09-11T02:22:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/?p=60139"},"modified":"2020-09-12T01:25:49","modified_gmt":"2020-09-12T01:25:49","slug":"born-enslaved-patrick-francis-healy-passed-his-way-to-lead-georgetown-university","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/?p=60139","title":{"rendered":"Born Enslaved, Patrick Francis Healy \u2018Passed\u2019 His Way to Lead Georgetown University"},"content":{"rendered":"

Born Enslaved, Patrick Francis Healy \u2018Passed\u2019 His Way to Lead Georgetown University<\/strong><\/em><\/a><\/p>\n

Smithsonian Magazine<\/a>
\n2020-09-08<\/p>\n

Bryan Greene<\/strong>
\nWashington, D.C.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n<\/small><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n

Because the 19th-century college president appeared white, he was able to climb the ladder of the Jesuit<\/a> community<\/em><\/p>\n

This back-to-school season, as the coronavirus pandemic<\/a> demands continued social distancing<\/a>, many college students are logging onto their classes remotely. While the country fights this public health crisis on one front, it fights the ongoing effects of systemic racism<\/a> on another, and the battle is joined on America\u2019s college campuses, where skyrocketing tuition costs, debates over academic freedom, and reckonings with the legacies of institutional racism come together.<\/p>\n

The University of North Carolina<\/a>, for instance, has had to tackle both crises this summer, as it shuttered<\/a> dorms and sent students home after Covid-19<\/a> cases spiked soon after opening. In July, administrators approved guidelines for renaming buildings<\/a> that currently honor North Carolinians who promoted the murderous 1898 overthrow of Wilmington\u2019s<\/a> elected multiracial government. In June, meanwhile, Princeton acceded to longstanding demands to strip Woodrow Wilson\u2019s name from its public policy school<\/a>, since his most notorious public policy as President of the United States<\/a> was to segregate the federal workforce. Following the Minneapolis police killing of George Floyd<\/a>, an ever-widening circle of students on campuses nationwide are re-examining their institutions\u2019 unquestioned genuflection to their white-supremacist heritage<\/a>.<\/p>\n

But at Georgetown University<\/a>, students, faculty, alumni, and administration have been re-appraising the school\u2019s racist past for years. In 1838, when the Jesuit school was deep in debt, its president, Reverend Thomas F. Mulledy<\/a>, on behalf of the Maryland<\/a> Jesuits<\/a>, sold 272 black men, women and children to Louisiana plantations to keep the school afloat<\/a>. Three years ago, Georgetown pulled Mulledy\u2019s name off a dormitory, replacing it with the name of enslaved laborer Isaac Hawkins<\/a>. Georgetown will now consider applicants who are descendants of these enslaved persons in the same light as the children of faculty, staff and alumni for purposes of admission.<\/p>\n

What makes Georgetown\u2019s reflective moment most remarkable, however, and complicated, is that 35 years after Mulledy salvaged the school\u2019s finances by selling human property, the school would be led by a man who, himself, was born enslaved. The story of Georgetown president Reverend Patrick Francis Healy<\/a> reveals how a university built by enslaved persons<\/a>, and rescued from collapse by the sale of enslaved persons, saw its \u201csecond founding<\/a>\u201d in the late 19th century under the guidance of a man whom the Jesuits knew had been born black but helped \u201cpass\u201d as white<\/a>…<\/p>\n

Read the entire article here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Because the 19th-century college president appeared white, he was able to climb the ladder of the Jesuit community<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,1245,459,8,6462,820,6940,20],"tags":[31129,7709,31133,31131,7712,10478,31130,31132,22848,25360],"class_list":["post-60139","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articles","category-biography","category-history","category-media-archive","category-passing-2","category-religion","category-slavery","category-usa","tag-bryan-greene","tag-georgetown-university","tag-isaac-hawkins","tag-jesuit-order","tag-patrick-francis-healy","tag-smithsonian-magazine","tag-society-of-jesus","tag-thomas-f-mulledy","tag-thomas-mulledy","tag-washington-d-c"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/60139","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=60139"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/60139\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":60153,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/60139\/revisions\/60153"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=60139"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=60139"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=60139"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}