Q&A with Rachel L. Swarns

 

 

 

Rachel L. Swarns is the author of the book The 272: The Families Who Were Enslaved and Sold to Build the American Catholic Church. The book is now available in paperback. Her other books include American Tapestry. She is a journalism professor at New York University and a contributing writer for The New York Times.

 

Q: The 272 began as a New York Times article--at what point did you decide to write a book about these families?

 

A: It all started with an email from a colleague at The New York Times. She’d received a pitch offering us an exclusive about an 1838 slave sale. She was intrigued, but was it a story?

 

I had been writing about Michelle Obama’s enslaved ancestors, and I could see how this would allow me to explore how slavery was tied to so many contemporary institutions.

 

I wrote the story, and felt it would resonate with people—Catholic people bought and sold people to Georgetown University? When the story ran, with the response that followed, we saw the emergence of the descendant community.

 

The first article was in 2016, and I continued to write. The descendants grew, and we reached out, connecting people to their history. I kept learning.

 

I started out writing about Georgetown, but the more I dug, I realized it wasn’t just Georgetown. So many institutions have ties to this. I realized it was the Catholic Church, too. Several months after the first story ran, I saw that there was something bigger here.

 

Q: In The New York Times Book Review, historian David W. Blight wrote, “No single work of history can remedy the vexing issue of repair for slavery in America, but The 272 advances the conversation and challenges the collective conscience; without knowing this history in its complexity we are left with only raw, uncharted memory.” What do you think of that description?

 

A: It’s very interesting. I hope he’s right. I think what’s important to me is that I really want to deepen Americans’ understanding of the ties between slavery and contemporary institutions. There’s a sense as Americans that this is old history and has nothing to do with me.

 

For me, it’s so important for us as Americans to realize that we are all living with slavery’s legacies now. It’s all around us. With research and reporting making this more visible to a wider audience, if that happens through my work, that’s what I hope it will do.

 

Q: How did you research the book, and what did you learn that especially surprised you, particularly regarding the Catholic Church?

 

A: I started with a story about an 1838 slave sale that benefits Georgetown. It’s not like Catholic slaveholding was unknown, but this origin story of the Catholic Church wasn’t widely known at all. It wasn’t something that was routinely taught.

 

My thinking was about the importance of helping people understand the connections between the Catholic Church and slavery, and centering the voices of the enslaved.

 

If I’m trying to bring readers into the story, knowing there’s a disinclination to look at slavery, I wanted to tell the story of a family. I wanted to find a family that was split up by the sale.

 

The Jesuits were good record-keepers. Georgetown holds archives with thousands of records. If you’re writing about slavery, you know that enslaved people were not allowed to read or write. The materials—letters, journals--are scarce. So you’re talking about the enslavers’ records.

 

The first thing, who were the priests working on the plantations? Was there anything they’d written about the enslaved people on the plantations? You’re relying on oral history and on records. And property records—enslaved people were property. There are sales records of human beings. There are inventories of household items: furniture, livestock, names of people.

 

Members of the family sued the Jesuits, and the lawsuits are an important source of information. There are letters from priests, there are diaries. Sacramental records are really important—the priests believed enslaved people had souls and that they needed to record those souls. I was stitching together fragments to try to document the history of the Church in people’s stories.

 

What’s surprising? I’m Black and Catholic myself. I didn’t know the extent of it. Even when I was writing the story and decided to write a book, I didn’t know.

 

In the origin story, enslaved people are almost entirely left out—it’s seen as a Northern, immigrant church.

 

Q: What do you hope readers take away from The 272?

 

A: This is hard history. It’s heartbreaking and painful. But it’s also a story about family, love, and faith. That’s a really important part of the story.

 

These families were living under a kind of fear that it’s hard to wrap your mind around. They did everything they could to hold their family together and hold onto their faith, even when they were betrayed and sold by the Church.

 

After the Civil War, many of the families stayed, and some became lay and religious leaders. They made the Church more reflective of the universal ideal it talks about. It’s a story about family, holding on when there seems no reason to.

 

Q: Are you working on another book?

 

A: My agent says I need to get going!

 

I’m working on a digital project, an archive that will allow you to tap on a map and see the institutions in your community that have this history. Your bank? Your insurance company? You can see archival records that connect the institution to slavery.

 

I think about storytelling, but also about how to get people engaged with the legacy of this history. If you see it in your community, it might get people to engage. I’m just getting started.

 

Q: Anything else we should know?

 

A: The one thing I’d like to talk about is the family I write about. One of the ways to get folks into this history is to talk about a family, the Mahoney family.

 

Ann Joice arrives as an indentured servant, and she’s forced into slavery. She would tell her story, her descendants would tell her story. Harry Mahoney becomes a plantation foreman to save his family.

 

I deal with the history and also where we are now. I write about the historical Mahoney family and their descendants now. There are more than 6,000. It’s interesting what the descendants have done. They’ve pressed Georgetown and the Church to grapple with this history and try to make amends.

 

They’re also stitching this family back together. They’re meeting on Zoom and doing DNA tests. The family was torn apart about 1838, and they are stitching themselves back together. It’s remarkable to see.

 

--Interview with Deborah Kalb. Here's a previous Q&A with Rachel L. Swarns.