Person

Rachel L. Swarns

Bylines

Lynchings in the North

A project to bring to light the stories of these victims’ lives and to highlight the patterns of racial terror perpetrated across the Northeast and Midwest.

by Rachel L. Swarns via NYU Journalism on September 9, 2023
The Families Enslaved by the Jesuits, Then Sold to Save Georgetown

In 1838, leaders of the Catholic order faced opposition from their own priests, but pressed forward with the sale of 272 human beings anyway.

by Rachel L. Swarns via Retropolis on June 15, 2023

The 272: The Families Who Were Enslaved and Sold to Build the American Catholic Church

Rachel L. Swarns

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Members of the Mason family, St. Inigoes, Maryland, circa 1890–1909.

How Bondage Built the Church

Swarns’s book about a sale of enslaved people by Jesuit priests to save Georgetown University reminds us that the legacy of slavery is the legacy of resistance.

by Tiya Miles via New York Review of Books on May 2, 2024

Georgetown University building.

Confronting Georgetown’s History of Enslavement

In “The 272,” Rachel L. Swarns sets out how the country’s first Catholic university profited from the sale of enslaved people.

by Paul Elie via The New Yorker on June 27, 2023

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