In 1838, Georgetown College, a Jesuit institution in Maryland, was on the verge of bankruptcy. To resolve this situation, the Jesuits decided to sell 272 people enslaved on their plantations to various landowners in Louisiana. According to the Jesuits’ accounts, most of these people died in transit. But in 2015, a former Georgetown student carried out genealogical research on former plantations in Louisiana, and an article inThe New York Times reported on his findings. The research revealed that in fact 314 people were sold and that today more than 10,000 direct descendants have been identified, scattered around the United States, but particularly in the small town of Maringouin near Baton Rouge. While Georgetown College has become a modern university, among the most prestigious institutions in the United States, Maringouin has remained the same backwater surrounded by sugar cane fields.

In an effort to take responsibility for this grim past, Georgetown University created a working group on "slavery, memory and reconciliation" and extended an official apology in 2017. What has changed in the Descendants’ perception of their own history and how does an institution like Georgetown take responsibility for this story? A difficult conversation was established between the University and the communities of Descendants. Yet this dialogue proved indispensable in that it revealed underlying questions about responsibility and allowed for a framework to put forward demands for reparations. The University took steps towards paying reparations and, more recently, the heads of the Conference of Jesuit Priests promised to raise 100 millions dollars to benefit Descendant communities.

By putting memorial justice at the center of the debate, Georgetown, the Jesuits, and the Descendants, speak to us of another America, an America brave enough to work on memory in a way that is far removed from the fatalistic and dystopian representations that have become the norm among many press correspondents. This is what I wanted to see, to document, and to understand. What do the Descendants have to say to us, to teach us? How does an institution like Georgetown confront its past? Through photographs, interviews, and the collection of archival documents, I attempted to create a portrait of the communities of Descendants in Louisiana, but also of the students and historians at Georgetown University, as well as the genealogists and other people who helped bring this research to light. I wanted to report on this memory, as a witness, focusing on the dialogue underway and not on the divisions.

What is taking place between Descendants, Georgetown and the Jesuits could well serve as an example for future generations. It shows once again how important it is to face our history in order to overcome inequality and racial discrimination.