March 13, 2026
A new documentary explores the 272 enslaved people who were sold to save Georgetown University from financial ruin.
A new documentary revisits the story of 272 enslaved people who were sold in New Orleans in 1838 by Jesuit priests in an effort to rescue Georgetown University from financial ruin.
Titled The Georgetown 272: The Journey, the new film, which held its first public screening during Black History Month at Loyola University, the Jesuit institution in New Orleans, follows the lives of the men, women, and children who were sold from Jesuit plantations in Maryland and transported to Louisiana, where they were forced to work on sugar plantations, WWLTV reported.
The story of the so-called “Georgetown 272” remained largely unknown — even to the film’s director, New Orleans filmmaker Al Moten Jr. — until about a decade ago, when Georgetown University formally acknowledged it. The revelation sparked widespread media coverage, prompted reconciliation efforts by the university, and drew attention to a concentration of descendants in the central Louisiana town of Maringouin.
“That’s the whole goal of this documentary — to bring it out to heal it,” Moten said. “Just like a wound, you can’t keep the wound closed. The wound has to get air.”
Moten said he first learned about the “Georgetown 272” during the pandemic after a friend called and asked if he had heard of the story, which he hadn’t. That conversation prompted him to begin researching the sale of the enslaved people and its lasting impact on generations of their descendants.
Historians say the people sold in 1838 endured a brutal journey to Louisiana that mirrored the horrors of the transatlantic slave trade. After arriving, they were separated and sold.
“The enslaved people who left Georgetown endured a Middle Passage,” said Dr. Sharlene Sinegal-Decuir, chair of African American Studies at Xavier University and a participant in the documentary. “Getting on a ship and surviving a month-long trip from Maryland all the way to the deep South, the port of New Orleans.”
Once in Louisiana, the enslaved people faced what Sinegal-Decuir described as “a death sentence” at the time.
The documentary explores how the stories of the Georgetown 272 were erased. In the film, Richard Cellini, founder of the Georgetown Memory Project, recalls asking a university official what happened to the enslaved people after the sale. According to Cellini, the official said the university believed they had all died shortly after arriving in Louisiana and left no descendants.
His research later uncovered records showing many of the enslaved people did survive and that roughly 4,000 of their direct descendants are alive today.
In 2019, a student referendum prompted Georgetown to pledge annual contributions of up to $400,000 to support community projects for descendants. The university later launched a five-year partnership with the Southern University system in 2022 and, in 2023, Georgetown and the Jesuits pledged a combined $42 million to the Descendants Truth and Reconciliation Foundation.
However, some descendants say the university has not fully followed through. Matthew Mims of Maringouin, west of Baton Rouge, said communication with Georgetown about its commitments eventually stopped after a series of emails.
“Georgetown and the Jesuits have responded to this history,” Cellini says in the film. “It’s not that their response isn’t good — it’s just not good enough.”
A university spokesperson said in a statement that the school remains committed to addressing and repairing the harms tied to its involvement in the slave trade.
“Georgetown is engaged in a long-term and ongoing process to more deeply understand and respond to the university’s role in the injustice of slavery and the legacies of enslavement and segregation in our nation,” the spokesperson said. “Through engagement with the members of the Descendant community, collaborative projects and new initiatives and learning and research, the university pursues a path of memorialization and reconciliation in our present day.”
RELATED CONTENT: Georgetown University Hosts Inaugural African Business Conference
