Slavery, History, Memory and Reconciliation

St. Louis University's student government unanimously passed a resolution urging the school to address its history of slavery and compensate descendants for long-standing harm.

Descendants of enslaved Black people who worked for Jesuit missions in Missouri, including building St. Louis University, say the institution owes them up to $74 billion for unpaid labor. They are demanding that SLU officials hold to their commitments to work toward racial healing.

Descendants of people enslaved by St. Louis University Jesuits call on the university to erect a monument to commemorate their ancestors.

A dispute over the location of an 1894 lynching roils a Missouri town.

The Descendants of the St. Louis University Enslaved are hosting a headstone ceremony to honor and celebrate the life of their ancestor Sylvester Chauvin on June 13. Chauvin was a star baseball player for the St. Louis Black Stockings, one of the country’s first Black baseball teams.

The Missouri History Museum’s Thomas Jefferson statue was America’s first public memorial dedicated to its third president in 1913. New interpretive panels will acknowledge that he enslaved more than 600 people.

This episode is the first of a two-part tribute to a man whose passion for social justice and cultural memory impacted hundreds of people in the St. Louis region: Dr. Jonathan Cedric Smith, who died this year on Juneteenth. Among many community roles, he served on the board of St. Louis Public Radio. Last year, Lauren and Jia Lian had the opportunity to interview Dr. Smith about his perspective as Co-Chair of the Slavery, History, Memory, and Reconciliation Project. To introduce you to this project and Dr. Smith’s role in it, we speak with Marissanne Lewis-Thompson, afternoon newscaster and general assignment reporter at St. Louis Public Radio. Then, we travel back in time to share Jonathan’s own words about what the Slavery, History, Memory, and Reconciliation Project meant to him. Finally, historian Dr. Kelly Schmidt will explain how Jonathan’s care for descendant communities shaped the project and his youngest brother, Jacques, will share how Jonathan’s passion for cultural memory, ancestry, and history began.

The Archdiocese of St. Louis recently revealed some of its early bishops and clergy held enslaved people. That includes Bishop William DuBourg and Bishop Joseph Rosati. Now two schools named for the men are reckoning with that history.

The Archdiocese of St. Louis is the latest religious institution to acknowledge its role in enslaving people. The archdiocese started a project called Forgive Us Our Trespasses to uncover that history.

Jonathan Smith, the vice president for diversity and community engagement at St. Louis University, has died. Smith, 61, served as an assistant professor of American Studies and African American Studies, and would later become the university’s first chief diversity officer.