Truth-telling at Loyola Marymount University

DTRF President and CEO Monique Trusclair Maddox and Father Timothy Kesicki, Chair of the Descendants Truth & Reconciliation Trust, recently spoke at a Loyola Marymount University Black History Month event.

Together, they shared the history of Jesuit slaveholding and its ties to higher education — a history that shaped institutions like LMU and that is still being reckoned with today. The conversation traced how the labor of enslaved people helped build American Jesuit universities, and how Descendants and Jesuits are now working to confront that inheritance honestly.

Events like this are part of how the Foundation does its work. Truth-telling in classrooms, sanctuaries, and campus auditoriums opens conversations that have been deferred for generations — and creates the conditions under which real healing becomes possible.