Dr. Lynn Locklear Nehemiah made the surprising discovery of her connection to the GU272 story after taking an ancestry DNA test in 2017. Her paternal third great-grandmother Louisa Mahoney was listed on the sale docket of the 1838 sale by the Jesuits to plantations in Louisiana. Louisa was warned of the impending danger and hid in the woods along with her aging mother and father, thus escaping the sale. She and her children, documented as the "last of the Jesuits slaves," remained enslaved by the Jesuits until emancipation in 1865. She has done extensive research on her family history which she is able to trace back to pre colonial Jamestown. Lynn has become passionate about genealogy and the importance of heritage and family history in strengthening identity, potential, purpose, and fostering wholeness.

Lynn and her husband Renaldo live in Silver Spring, MD on land once owned by a colonial slave holder who held one of Lynn's early ancestors in bondage. She currently serves on Loyola University Maryland’s task force for investigating the University’s ties to Slavery. Lynn is a 1990 graduate of Howard University College of Dentistry and Black Enterprise Magazine’s 2006 Small Business Innovator of the Year award. She is a current student at Global Awakening School of Supernatural Ministry with a special interest in the mind, body and soul healing and restoration available through Jesus Christ. She is the mother of two amazing adult children, Kyla and August Matthews, and wife of olympian, Renaldo Nehemiah.

Kevin Porter is an official for the US Federal Government and a family history researcher. He is a descendant of Mary Queen, famously known as the “Poppaw Queen,” who was illegally enslaved by the Jesuits. Since 2016, he has worked with the Georgetown Memory Project and other descendants of Jesuit Enslavement in efforts to reconstruct their families.

Mélisande Short-Colomb began her relationship with Georgetown University in 2017 as a descendant of two families enslaved and then sold by the Society of Jesus in 1838 to ensure the solvency of the institution. Following the Working Group on Slavery, Memory, and Reconciliation recommendations and with the support of President Jack DeGioia, Mélisande was one of two undergraduate students accepted into the College. She has developed an ongoing relationship with the Laboratory for Global Performance & Politics. Under the direction of Derek Goldman, Meli has written, developed, and will be performing her one person show Here I Am.

Meli serves on the Board of Advisors for the Georgetown Memory Project, is a founding Council Member of the GU272 Descendants Association, and was on the GU272 Advocacy Team. She was a leading voice in the student referendum on the $27.20 reconciliation fee, which passed with overwhelming student support on April 11, 2019. She received the 2019 Fr. Bunn Award for journalistic excellence for commentary in support of the “GU272 Referendum to Create a New Legacy.”

Meli is frequently invited to speak on the subjects of the GU272 and reparations. Her talks vary from testimony before the InterAmerican Commission on Human Rights, to speaking at the Brooklyn Historical Society, to a TEDx talk. Meli has been featured in print in outlets from the Washington Post and The New Yorker to the AARP Journal. Multiple news programs have had stories on Meli and she starred in a Full Frontal with Samantha Bee episode on reparations.

A native of New Orleans, LA, she retired from a lengthy culinary career, most recently as Chef Instructor for Langlois Culinary Crossroads, to relocate to Washington to attend Georgetown University. Her family includes four adult children and much-loved grandchildren, and scores of newly identified GU272 extended family members.

(https://globallab.georgetown.edu/team/melisande-short-colomb/)

Karran Harper Royal is the founder of the online community, Descendants of Jesuit Enslaved Ancestors, which encourages and guides members in ongoing reparative efforts to re-connect African American families in Maryland and Louisiana that were fragmented when their ancestors were sold in the slave trade. Mrs. Harper Royal is also a founding member and former Executive Director of the GU272 Descendants Association and co-hosts the genealogy television show, “Nurturing Our Roots.”

When Karran’s sons attended New Orleans Public Schools, one a pre-Katrina graduate and one a post-Katrina graduate, she became deeply involved in public school parent advocacy. She has presented at dozens of national and international conferences related to special education advocacy, ADHD, and education reform and was a Coordinator and National Board Member for CHADD (Children and Adults with Attention Deficit Disorder). Within New Orleans she has served as the Assistant Director of Pyramid Community Parent Resource Center, training the next generation of parent advocates for children with disabilities. She was one of the producers of “A Perfect Storm: The Takeover of New Orleans Public Schools.” Karran has consulted with the Southern Poverty Law Center and contributed to Research on Reforms, an organization studying educational reforms in post-Katrina New Orleans. She has served as a member of the National Journey for Justice Alliance and the Alliance to Reclaim Our Schools, and is a founding member of the Louisiana Alliance to Reclaim Our Schools. Her work has been publicly recognized by the New Orleans City Council and the Louisiana House of Representatives.

Jody Lynn Allen, Ph.D. is a native of Hampton, VA and an Assistant Professor of History at William & Mary. Her research interests cover the U.S. Civil War through the Long Civil Rights Movement focusing on black agency. Her current manuscript, Roses in December: Black Life in Hanover County, Virginia During the Era of Disfranchisement, considers the consequences of and responses to the 1902 Virginia constitution revisions that disfranchised most African American males. She is working with a colleague to produce "The Green Light," a documentary film on the school desegregation case, Charles C. Green v. the School Board of New Kent County, VA. This little-known 1968 Supreme Court decision led to the integration of public schools throughout the South. She co-authored "Recovering a 'Lost' Story Using Oral History: The United States Supreme Court's Historic Green v. New Kent County, Virginia, Decision" which appeared in The Oral History Review. Her article, “Thomas Dew and the Rise of Proslavery Ideology at William & Mary” appears in the Forum on Slavery and Universities in the May 2018 edition of Slavery & Abolition. Allen is also the director of The Lemon Project: A Journey of Reconciliation, which is uncovering, making public, and addressing William & Mary’s 326-year relationship with African Americans on the campus and in the Williamsburg and Greater Tidewater area. During the 2017-2018 academic year, Allen was a visiting assistant professor of history at the University of the South at Sewanee, TN where she taught African American History and consulted with Sewanee’s Project on Slavery, Race, and Reconciliation.

(https://www.wm.edu/sites/lemonproject/about/listing-folder-directory/allen_jody.php)