When Ashley Robinson and her mother took DNA tests 10 years ago and began meeting long lost cousins, they stumbled across a surprising family history that changed their lives. Robinson’s lineage traced back to the 272 West Africans who were enslaved by Jesuits and sold to plantation owners in the southern US in 1838. The sale of the enslaved Africans helped fund Georgetown University, the oldest Jesuit higher education institution in the US, and served as collateral to the now defunct Citizens Bank of New Orleans, whose assets were later folded into JPMorgan Chase.
Robinson dived into researching her lineage after having her first child at 21 years old, and soon enrolled in an organization called the GU272 Descendants Association, which hosts genealogical workshops and connects people whose ancestors were sold by Georgetown University. While national discussions around reparations for the descendants of enslaved Africans have largely stalled, Robinson’s uncovering of her family’s history met an unlikely resolution. During her senior year in undergraduate school, she received a scholarship funded by the successors of her family’s enslavers.
