When Robin Proudie walks St. Louis University’s campus, she treads ground traversed by relatives generations before her. Those forebears were not alumni. They were Black men, women and children who were enslaved by the school’s Jesuit Catholics in the 1800s. So becoming a student at SLU this past fall was a deeply considered choice with great meaning and purpose.
“I was accepted to other universities,” Proudie said. “I wanted to go to St. Louis University. My ancestors were forced to labor there during the time [others] were getting an education. So it’s symbolic to me. I’m going to walk across this stage in 2027 with a degree they were not afforded.”
Being a student at the institution that held her great-great-grandmother and two dozen other kin in bondage expands upon work Proudie has led as the founder and executive director of Descendants of St. Louis University Enslaved, a nonprofit organization formed a few years after Proudie’s family received word of their enslaved history from the Slavery, History, Memory and Reconciliation Project in 2019. Getting access to SLU’s historical archives through that project aligned with her personal quest for answers…