An account of one man's years sleeping overnight in the oft-overlooked slave dwellings across the United States and how he has used the experiences to shed light on larger issues of race and history in America.

Joseph McGill, a historic preservationist and Civil War reenactor, founded the Slave Dwelling Project in 2010 based on an idea that was sparked and developed from 1999. Ever since, he’s been touring the country, spending the night in former slave dwellings – throughout the South, but also the North and the West, where former slave dwellings also exist. Events and gatherings are arranged around these overnight stays, and it provides a unique way to understand the often otherwise obscured and distorted history of slavery. It has inspired difficult conversations about race in communities from South Carolina to Alabama to Texas to Minnesota to Oregon, and all over the US map.

“Sleeping with the Ancestors focuses on all of the key sites McGill has visited over the past two decades and digs deeper into the actual history of each, using McGill’s own experience  to enhance those original stories. Altogether, it gives a broader look at the history of slavery, and especially the unexpected, obscured, and ignored aspects of that history.

Prior to his current position as founder of the Slave Dwelling Project, Joseph McGill was a field officer for the National Trust for Historic Preservation. He is the former executive director of the African American Museum in Cedar Rapids, Iowa and the former director of history and culture at Penn Center, St. Helena Island, South Carolina. McGill was also a park ranger at Fort Sumter. He appears in the book Confederates in the Attic by Tony Horwitz. He is also a member of the South Carolina Humanities Council Speakers Bureau and holds a Bachelor of Arts degree in Professional English from South Carolina State University. 

Journalist Herb Frazier is the author of Behind God’s Back: Gullah Memories. He is a co-author of We Are Charleston: Tragedy and Triumph at Mother Emanuel with Marjory Wentworth and Dr. Bernard Powers Jr. Frazier’s forthcoming book, Crossing the Sea on a Sacred Song.