Movie Explores Georgetown’s Sale of 272 Enslaved Folks

[ad_1] by Jeroslyn JoVonn March 13, 2026

A brand new documentary explores the 272 enslaved individuals who had been offered to save lots of Georgetown College from monetary wreck.

A brand new documentary revisits the story of 272 enslaved individuals who had been offered in New Orleans in 1838 by Jesuit clergymen in an effort to rescue Georgetown College from monetary wreck.

Titled The Georgetown 272: The Journey, the brand new movie, which held its first public screening throughout Black Historical past Month at Loyola College, the Jesuit establishment in New Orleans, follows the lives of the lads, ladies, and kids who had been offered from Jesuit plantations in Maryland and transported to Louisiana, the place they had been pressured to work on sugar plantations, WWLTV reported.

The story of the so-called “Georgetown 272” remained largely unknown — even to the movie’s director, New Orleans filmmaker Al Moten Jr. — till a few decade in the past, when Georgetown College formally acknowledged it. The revelation sparked widespread media protection, prompted reconciliation efforts by the college, and drew consideration to a focus of descendants within the central Louisiana city of Maringouin.

“That’s the entire objective of this documentary — to carry it out to heal it,” Moten stated. “Similar to a wound, you may’t hold the wound closed. The wound has to get air.”

Moten stated he first realized concerning the “Georgetown 272” through the pandemic after a pal known as and requested if he had heard of the story, which he hadn’t. That dialog prompted him to start researching the sale of the enslaved folks and its lasting impression on generations of their descendants.

Historians say the folks offered in 1838 endured a brutal journey to Louisiana that mirrored the horrors of the transatlantic slave commerce. After arriving, they had been separated and offered.

“The enslaved individuals who left Georgetown endured a Center Passage,” stated Dr. Sharlene Sinegal-Decuir, chair of African American Research at Xavier College and a participant within the documentary. “Getting on a ship and surviving a month-long journey from Maryland all the best way to the deep South, the port of New Orleans.”

As soon as in Louisiana, the enslaved folks confronted what Sinegal-Decuir described as “a loss of life sentence” on the time.

The documentary explores how the tales of the Georgetown 272 had been erased. Within the movie, Richard Cellini, founding father of the Georgetown Reminiscence Mission, remembers asking a college official what occurred to the enslaved folks after the sale. In keeping with Cellini, the official stated the college believed that they had all died shortly after arriving in Louisiana and left no descendants.

His analysis later uncovered data displaying lots of the enslaved folks did survive and that roughly 4,000 of their direct descendants are alive at present.

In 2019, a scholar referendum prompted Georgetown to pledge annual contributions of as much as $400,000 to assist group tasks for descendants. The college later launched a five-year partnership with the Southern College system in 2022 and, in 2023, Georgetown and the Jesuits pledged a mixed $42 million to the Descendants Reality and Reconciliation Basis.

Nonetheless, some descendants say the college has not absolutely adopted by. Matthew Mims of Maringouin, west of Baton Rouge, stated communication with Georgetown about its commitments ultimately stopped after a sequence of emails.

“Georgetown and the Jesuits have responded to this historical past,” Cellini says within the movie. “It’s not that their response isn’t good — it’s simply not ok.”

A college spokesperson stated in an announcement that the varsity stays dedicated to addressing and repairing the harms tied to its involvement within the slave commerce.

“Georgetown is engaged in a long-term and ongoing course of to extra deeply perceive and reply to the college’s position within the injustice of slavery and the legacies of enslavement and segregation in our nation,” the spokesperson stated. “By means of engagement with the members of the Descendant group, collaborative tasks and new initiatives and studying and analysis, the college pursues a path of memorialization and reconciliation in our current day.”