Adriana Hinojosa, 8th Period, Taking It Back

Like the history of any other country, the history of the United States has some beautiful parts to it just as it does awful parts we wish were not there. It was recently discovered that the people of Georgetown University sold 272 slaves in order to pay a debt. When people recently found this out they felt something needed to be done, some sort of course of action had to be taken. 272 is a huge number. There is no question that the fact that this was done is absolutely terrible and that the university made a huge mistake but we have to take into account that this happened in 1838. Something like this, although wrong, would have been more widely accepted and done. After this was discovered about Georgetown University, other really good schools such as the ivy leagues began to be discovered for being guilty of the same thing. All that Georgetown University did was strip the names of 2 men that were involved with the selling of these slaves back in the day. In my personal opinion, that is all that can be done. Nearly 200 years have passed since the incident, no one working for the university will have been involved with the selling of those slaves at this point. I think that as painful as certain parts of history are, we need to come to come to terms and recognize that they happened. We can't go back and try to undo certain things because they did happen. Our country has come a long way since incidents such as this one and that is something that in and of itself we should be proud of.


http://www.nytimes.com/2016/04/17/us/georgetown-university-search-for-slave-descendants.html