What We Have Learned
The Society of Jesus participated in the institution of slavery in North America from the colonial era until the passage of the 13th Amendment. The involuntary labor of the people the Jesuits owned, rented, and borrowed helped establish, expand, and sustain Jesuit missionary efforts and educational institutions in colonial North America and, over time, across the United States. The Jesuits’ use of enslaved labor is a legacy shared by all Jesuits and Jesuit institutions.
Slavery was not an institution that operated in isolation. Slaveholders, and slaveowning institutions, shared in their complicity of holding human beings in bondage.
By saying “owned, rented, and borrowed,” we are acknowledging that the Jesuits’ participation in the systems of slavery was far more widespread than it appears if we only pay attention to the lives of people they owned directly. Jesuits exploited the lives and labor of people they rented from other local owners, and people they received as loans without the expectation of compensation to the slaveowner.
In Grand Coteau, Louisiana, for example, the Jesuits legally owned at least 13 people. But they relied on the labor of more than 47 other enslaved people provided by others. Because their coerced labor benefited the Jesuits and their institutions, it is important to understand the lives of each of these enslaved people—owned, rented, and borrowed—and share their stories.
We learn more every day about the lives of the people the Jesuits held in bondage. Their experiences were similar to those of other enslaved people in the United States. Although they endured abysmal living conditions, physical violence, family separation and the rupture of relationships, enslaved people were resilient, going to courageous lengths to protect themselves and their families, resist their enslavement, and achieve freedom.
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