Why President Patrick Francis Healy Hid That His Mother Was Enslaved

Subscribe to my channel https://www.youtube.com/@LoveAndSucce... In November 1853 a 19-year-old Jesuit at Holy Cross, the future president of Georgetown, wrote to the priest he called Dad and stopped one sentence short of his own mother. "You know to what I refer." His mother was enslaved. Georgetown's own archive says he never acknowledged it. Patrick Francis Healy went on to run Georgetown University, raise the building that carries his name, and become the man Georgetown calls its second founder. In public he never said who his mother was. This video follows four papers that say it for him: his father's 1845 will, which names "my trusty woman Eliza" but cannot use the word "free"; a Georgia newspaper notice for the sale of about fifty people from the family estate; the Jesuit letters that called his background "the difficulty"; and the letter he wrote himself. WHAT'S IN IT The will clause a Georgia law of 1818 made dangerous to write The Georgetown president named as backup guardian for the Healy boys The $2,300 that rebuilt a Holy Cross hall The 1870 note to Rome about "the difficulty" The second page of the 1853 letter, and the date that ties it to the sale If you want more of these, the document first and the story second, subscribe. There are more files than you would think, and I keep opening them. Sources: Patrick Healy to George Fenwick, Holy Cross, November 23, 1853 (Maryland Province Archives, Box 182 Folder 10; transcription published by Georgetown University Library, 2023) Georgia Telegraph, January 3, 1854, "Fifty Negroes for Sale" (via Georgetown Slavery Archive, GSA398) Patrick F. Healy, SJ Papers, finding aid, Georgetown University Library (GTM-GAMMS57) #BlackHistory #AmericanHistory #Georgetown