Descendants of slaves that were forced to build St. Louis University say the Jesuit school owes them some $70 billion in reparations.
The figure was calculated by economists, based on 70 people identified as slaves of the Jesuits earning a low wage of $0.05 an hour between 1823 and 1865, and adjusted for inflation, according to a PBS article posted on the website of Descendants of the St. Louis University Enslaved last week.
DSLUE consists of 200 people that trace their lineage to the slaves, and have called on the university to come up with a plan to compensate them “what they are rightfully owed” for the sins of its founders.
“St. Louis University has a chance to do something positive by properly acknowledging the tragic history,” said DSLUE founder and director Robin Proudie, who is descended from university slaves Charles Chauvin and Henrietta Mills, documents show.
“The beginning of trying to make this right is saying the names of the enslaved so that we may never forget them.”
The Jesuits had relied on slaves around the world to provide free labor since its founding in 1540, according to the report.
Group members gathered at the Missouri campus on Thursday to demand that their ancestors “be taken from the darkness and brought into the light.”
A spokesperson for the university, which has an endowment of only $1.4 billion, told the outlet it could not yet provide a response for the reparations request.
“We acknowledge that progress on our efforts to reconcile with this shameful history has been slow, and we regret the hurt and frustration this has caused,” spokesperson Clayton Berry reportedly said.
Berry added that the university would continue working to make amends with descendant families through programs like the Jesuits’ “Slavery, History, Memory, and Reconciliation Project.”
In the project, the Catholic Church religious order acknowledged it used “involuntary labor” to “establish, expand, and sustain Jesuit missionary efforts and educational institutions” until the US abolished slavery.
Proudie said she hoped her group’s efforts to demand money from institutions build on slavery would benefit not just themselves, but “all the enslaved descendants of those who built this country.”
In 2021, leaders of the Jesuit conference of priests pledged to raise $100 million in reparations to the descendants of people the organization enslaved.
Last year, Georgetown University and the Jesuits pledged $27 million in money and land donations to the to the descendants of enslaved people sold to fund the school, according to the National African-American Reparations Commission.
Neither DSLUE nor university officials immediately responded to an interview request from The Post.