rachel il swarns for the 272 the families who were enslaved and sold to build the american catholic church. in 1838, a group of america's most prominent catholic priests sold 272 enslaved people to save their largest mission project, which is now georgetown university. in this groundbreaking account, professor swarns follows one family through nearly two centuries of indentured servitude and enslavement to uncover the harrowing origin story of the catholic church in the united states. rachel swarns is a journalist, author and associate professor of journalism at new york university who writes about race and race relations as a contributing writer for the new york times. her articles about georgetown university's roots in slavery touched off a national conversation and about america's university days and their ties to this painful period in history. her work has been recognized, raised and supported by the national endowment, the humanities, the four org ford foundation, the leon levy center for biography, the biographers international organized nation, among others. as a correspondent for

rachel swarns, a journalist, author and associate professor journalism at nyu. she writes about race and race relations and a contributing writer for the new york times, where i first read her on the subject. she wrote book on her work, been recognized by the national endowment for humanities, the ford foundation, the leon levy center i biography artists residencies and, other programs. she is the author. first book was american tapestry story of the black, white and multiracial ancestors of michelle obama, and she is a coauthor of unseen, unpublished black history from the new york times, her most book is the 272, which we'll hear about in a moment. kidada williams is like me, a professor of history. she teaches at wayne state in detroit. she is the author of two amazing books. i death coming, which she will be talking about today. and they left great marks me her she is a coauthor of the charleston syllabus, which was a collection of writings, was put out after the massacre in charleston. that was an amazing thing. kidada and she is the creator of a podcast se

things and and i think just recognize using these folks and having them seen is really important rachel swarns descendants all of you, thank you all so much for being here. thankthis course course, as you, examines the development of the us. well, first state the way americans have gone about making social provision for themselves. social provision includes the range of programs at reducing risk or enhancing quality of life. as you know, our focus has on the specific issue of poor relief because relief of poverty seems to present the american system with its most intractable, intractable problem. and i'm going to depart from our usual format here a little bit. i'm going to do a fair amount of reading this afternoon because i'm concerned about covering all the material that we have to cover over the course of our exploration of the construction of the american welfare. we've encountered several different persistent themes. a among these are the idea that in the united states, social provision is divided, public and private institutions. public provide government provides welfare programs. the p