Georgetown University has announced it will give priority in its admissions process to descendants of slaves owned by its founders.
The institution said the decision was an attempt to repent for profits it made from the slaves owned by Maryland Jesuits more than 100 years ago.
According to CBS, Georgetown President John DeGioia said that the institution will actively seek out eligible slave descendants and encourage them to apply.
In a letter students and faculty, he said: “I believe the most appropriate way for us to redress the participation of our predecessors in the institution of slavery is to address the manifestations of the legacy of slavery in our time.”
A university committee also released a report calling on its leaders to formally apologize for the university’s participation in the slave trade.
In the 19th century, two priests who were presidents of the university organised a sale of 272 people to pay off debts at the school. The slaves were sent to plantations in Louisiana.
The descendants of those slaves will get “the same consideration we give members of the Georgetown community in the admissions process,” when they apply to the university.
In addition to that, the university is already set to rename two building that had been after the two priests who participated in slave trade. Georgetown President announced that buildings will be named Issac, the name of the first enslaved person mentioned in documents of the sale, and Anne Marie Becraft, a free African American woman who established a school for black girls in Georgetown in 1827.
The university will also create a memorial to the slaves, who were sold by university presidents, and establish an Institute for the Study of Slavery and its Legacies to continue research into the history of slavery.