In recent years, a growing awareness of injustice and calls for reform have led to a racial reckoning, with businesses, corporations, nonprofit organizations and institutions across the country reassessing their own complicity with racism in its various forms.
Many Brooklynites know their city’s rich heritage in the movement to abolish slavery. However, Brooklyn’s history also contains a harsh history of slavery reaching back to the days of colonialism.
The devastating impact of the sin of slavery cannot be fixed with a simple apology and monetary restitution, Georgetown University officials acknowledge.
New research from public records and congregation and diocesan archives has found that six congregations of the Sisters of Charity Federation have predecessors who owned slaves.
For two descendants of slaves sold by the Jesuits in the 19th century, George Floyd’s death at the hands of disgraced Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin last May served as a reminder of what their ancestors endured, and how far the country still has to go.
The Jesuit order is pledging to raise $100 million for descendants of enslaved people once owned and sold by their order as a way to make reparations and also help the nation move toward racial healing.
James Augustine Healy in 1875 became the first bishop of African-American heritage in the U.S. He was the son of an Irish cotton planter father and a mixed-race mother who was a slave. This family from Georgia also produced two other priests, two nuns, a hardware dealer, and a famous ship captain.
From the White House to Vatican City, combatting the scourge of human trafficking has been a priority for popes and presidents alike in recent years.
According to the “Global Report on Trafficking in Persons,” the most common form of human trafficking (79 percent) is sexual exploitation — and the victims are predominantly women and girls — followed by forced labour (18 percent).
There is a hidden crisis in America. It is happening in brownstones on tree-lined streets you may have walked down, at stores you might have shopped at and on online sites you have shared family memories on.
