A civil rights attorney representing hundreds of Black Americans whose ancestors helped build Saint Louis University during slavery demanded $70 billion in reparations for years of free labor.
Attorney Areva Martin announced the reconciliation package on Feb. 8 at the Missouri university’s Busch Student Center, where she and other prominent community members put pressure on the university to pay the arrears and avoid a potential lawsuit.
Martin spoke on behalf of 200 descendants of Henrietta Mills and Charles Chauvin, an enslaved couple owned by the Saint Louis University Jesuits, whose forced labor helped to construct the Victorian-esque campus beginning in the late 1820s.
The call for reparations emerged from a grassroots effort by the Descendants of the St. Louis University Enslaved, a powerful nonprofit group in St. Louis dedicated to preserving the legacy of their enslaved forefathers who helped establish the American gateway to the West.
“We’re not asking for a handout,” said DSLUE president Robin Proudie, also a descendant of those who were enslaved by Saint Louis University. “We’re asking for their debt to be paid.”
They estimate that $365 million is due for the unpaid labor done 24 hours per day, 365 days per year by 70 enslaved people from 1823 to 1865 in an extraordinary and well-documented case of human trafficking before the Civil War.
At a Feb. 8 press briefing to demand the payout, Proudie stood alongside relatives and expressed hope that the compensation effort in St. Louis would inspire a broader reparations movement across the nation.
“We decided as a family that we would stand up not only for us, but for all of the enslaved descendants of those who built this country,” Proudie said, according to Spectrum News.
Nearly a decade ago, Saint Louis University conducted a thorough examination of its historical ties to slavery, leading to the 2016 publication of the report titled “Slavery,…
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