2021 Podcasts

Student Activism in the Archives: An Overdue Conversation with Maya Moretta

Jones, Thai; Moe, Melina

Maya Moretta is a recent graduate of Georgetown University. As a student, Moretta had worked with the Georgetown Slavery Archive to compile a massive database of names of enslaved people owned by Georgetown, and the Maryland Jesuits. She also became an activist working with Students for GU272 to pass a historic referendum demanding reparative justice for the descendants of enslaved people sold by the University in the 1830s. Since the referendum’s successful passage in 2019, Maya fought to have the decision enacted in practice. Maya chose to attend Georgetown University because she had heard so much about student activism on campus, and she was impressed by what she read about the university’s commitment to addressing its own histories of enslavement. But when she arrived as a freshman in the fall of 2017, she realized that these conversations – that were literally making news all around the world – were nowhere to be seen on campus. She set out to change that through research and activism.