The intended formal apology from St. Louis University to descendants of enslaved Black people who helped build the institution is postponed. A coalition of descendants pulled out hours before the apology on Wednesday, saying they could not move forward with the reconciliation ceremony because it seemed performative and not restorative.
“For five years, we have done everything they asked us to do … but what we will not do is become a photo op so they can go and parade us around and act like we are in alignment with what they are doing,” said Robin Proudie, executive director of Descendants of the St. Louis University Enslaved. “We want them to engage with us in a sincere manner, and we didn't feel that this apology was really about us.”
It was not until a teach-in last year that the university became more engaged with the descendants than it had been over the past few years. Descendants and officials began discussing a pathway to repair.
But days before Wednesday’s ceremony, Proudie asked officials to view what the school would commit to for reparations for the descendants. They did not share any details with her until the day of the ceremony, and cash reparations were not approved.
“We asked them, ‘What were they going to do?’ They told us a monument, a public apology and a report, and that wasn't in conjunction with what we all talked about,” Proudie said. “A core element of that was a way to repair in terms of financial or economic empowerment, and they told us that was totally off the table.”
According to a letter taped to the doors of St. Francis Xavier College Church – the site of the promised apology – SLU President Fred Pestello said the prayer service was postponed because the university needs to continue working to build a relationship with the descendants before it could continue with a formal event.
“This postponement does not signal an end to our engagement with reconciliation efforts,” Pestello said. “We remain hopeful for the future.”
Some family members of Henrietta Mills Chauvin, whom SLU Jesuits once enslaved in the 1800s, came from across the country Wednesday to be recognized. Eric Proudie, the great-great-great-great-grandson of Mills Chauvin, said he is disappointed in the university.
“It made me feel like they don't see us, they don't care about us, the same way they did when they enslaved our ancestors,” he said. “How can you enslave a person? You have no compassion, no understanding. You don't recognize them as a person, and that's how they made me feel when they did this.”
He hopes the university understands why it should pay reparations to the family and that officials honor the descendants’ plan for restoration.
In February 2024, the descendants said the institution owes them $74 billion for their ancestors’ unpaid labor and called on the university to make good on its commitments made nearly 10 years ago in its Slavery, History, Memory, and Reconciliation Project. The report highlighted the Jesuits' role in slavery and said the descendants should lead SLU’s restorative justice conversations.
Areva Martin, the descendants’ attorney, said the coalition had worked diligently to prepare a repair plan for university officials since last year’s call for reparations. The group presented the plan to the university and had robust discussions with staff and stakeholders.
“We had spent months planning an apology ceremony, but without any conversation, without any experts, economic expert, labor expert, historian, expert, no one was brought in to even have the conversation of what any kind of economic empowerment would look like,” Martin said.
She wants the university to be more transparent and bring in experts who would encourage the conversation about distributing cash payments to the descendants.
“There's a new president coming in, so we see it as a new opportunity for that new president to bring some different kind of leadership, hopefully, to this process and to move it forward,” Martin said. “This is not the end.”
