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Descendants of slaves that were forced to build St. Louis University say the Jesuit school owes them more than $70 billion in reparations.

The figure was calculated by economists, based on 70 people identified as slaves of the Jesuits earning a low wage of $0.05 an hour between 1823 and 1865, and adjusted for inflation, according to a PBS article posted on the website of Descendants of the St. Louis University Enslaved last week.

DSLUE consists of 200 people that trace their lineage to the slaves, and have called on the university to come up with a plan to compensate them “what they are rightfully owed” for the sins of its founders.

The group’s lawyer told The Post Wednesday that the figure derived by experts was “conservative,” and the start of a fair discussion, not a demand.

“I haven’t asked them to give us $74 billion, so let’s be real clear,” said Areva Martin.

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“We did what they have not done. We said ‘there’s an important part of this story that’s missing, and that’s what the economic valuation of these wages are,’” she said.

“And if we’re going to have a discussion about atonement and reconciliation, we need to have a discussion about all of the factors that go into that. We can’t just discuss it based on limited information, because we’re not going to end up with a totally fair resolution.”

Group members gathered at the Missouri campus on Thursday to demand that their ancestors “be taken from the darkness and brought into the light.”

DSLUE founder and director Robin Proudie is descended from university slaves Charles Chauvin and Henrietta Mills, according to university documents.

Proudie called on the university last week to “do something positive by properly acknowledging the tragic history” of her family members.

“The beginning of trying to make this right is saying the names of the enslaved so that we may never forget them.”

The Jesuits had relied on slaves around the world to provide free labor since its founding in 1540, according to the report.

A spokesperson for the university, which has an endowment of only $1.4 billion, told the outlet it could not yet provide a response for the reparations request.

“We acknowledge that progress on our efforts to reconcile with this shameful history has been slow, and we regret the hurt and frustration this has caused,” spokesperson Clayton Berry reportedly said.

Berry added that the university would continue working to make amends with descendant families through programs like the Jesuits’ “Slavery, History, Memory, and Reconciliation Project.”

In the project, the Catholic Church religious order acknowledged it used “involuntary labor” to “establish, expand, and sustain Jesuit missionary efforts and educational institutions” until the US abolished slavery.

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University officials did not immediately respond to an interview request from The Post.

Areva said she had spoken to university leaders in the past week and was “grateful for the work that they’ve done and their statements.

“We just want their actions to match their statements,” she said, pointing out that Jesuit officials at Loyola Maryland laid out a plan to make restitution for its slavery ties last month, as reported by The Washington Post.

In 2021, leaders of the Jesuit conference of priests pledged to raise $100 million in reparations to the descendants of people the organization enslaved.

Last year, Georgetown University and the Jesuits pledged $27 million in money and land donations to the descendants of enslaved people sold to fund the school, according to the National African-American Reparations Commission.

Proudie said she hoped her group’s efforts to demand money from institutions built on slavery would benefit not just themselves, but “all the enslaved descendants of those who built this country.”

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