Gabriel Dorsey

Gabriel Dorsey was just thirteen years old in 1828 when he was listed in the records of Washington Seminary—what would become Gonzaga College High School in Washington, D.C. He was enslaved, tasked with tending the gardens at the Jesuit-run school, and though only a boy, his labor was vital to the daily upkeep of the institution. For his work pulling weeds, Gabriel was once tipped seven cents—an extraordinary detail that survives in the Seminary's ledger and offers a fleeting glimpse into his humanity. His presence at Gonzaga is one of the earliest documented ties between the school and the institution of slavery, part of a larger system in which Catholic institutions in the United States both relied on and profited from the labor and sale of enslaved people.

Gabriel’s time at the school was short-lived. Not long after appearing in the school’s records, he was transferred to the slave jail operated by Franklin & Armfield in Alexandria, Virginia, one of the largest and most notorious slave-trading operations in the country. From there, Gabriel was shipped south—first sold for $450 and later, in New Orleans, for $700 at age 21. Like thousands of others, he became a commodity in the domestic slave trade, a young life uprooted and trafficked across state lines in pursuit of profit. The promise he may have once held for freedom was stripped away with each transaction.

More than 190 years later, students at Gonzaga unearthed Gabriel’s story as part of a broader research initiative examining the school’s involvement in slavery. Their work culminated in a moving exhibition, “Searching for Truth in the Garden,” which retraced Gabriel’s likely route to the docks of the Potomac and honored him through ceremony and storytelling. Gabriel Dorsey’s life, once confined to the margins of an account book, now anchors a new narrative of institutional reckoning—one that refuses to forget him.