Sleeping with the Ancestors: How I Followed the Footprints of Slavery
About this ebook
"Thought-provoking." —New York Times
Since founding the Slave Dwelling Project project in 2010, historic preservationist Joseph McGill Jr. has been touring the country, sleeping in places most Americans would never know existed. Sleeping with the Ancestors focuses on all of the key sites McGill has visited in his ongoing project and digs deeper into the actual history of each location, using McGill’s own experience and conversations with the community to enhance those original stories.
Together, McGill and coauthor Herb Frazier give readers an important emersion into the history of slavery, and especially the obscured and ignored aspects of that history.
Contains a new afterword and reading group guide.
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About the author
Joseph McGill Jr. is a history consultant for Magnolia Plantation in Charleston, South Carolina, and the founder and director of The Slave Dwelling Project. Previously, as a field officer for the National Trust for Historic Preservation, Mr. McGill worked to revitalize the Sweet Auburn commercial district in Atlanta, Georgia, and to develop a management plan for the Mississippi Delta National Heritage Area. He is a former executive director of the African American Museum in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, and a former director of history and culture at Penn Center, St. Helena Island, South Carolina. He has also served as a National Park Service park ranger at Fort Sumter National Monument in Charleston.
Herb Frazier is the special project editor at the Charleston City Paper. He is the author of Behind God’s Back: Gullah Memories, co-author of We Are Charleston: Tragedy and Triumph at Mother Emanuel with Marjory Wentworth and Dr. Bernard Powers Jr., and co-editor of Ukwell: Searching for Healing and Truth, South Carolina Writers and Poets Explore American Racism, with the late Horace Mungin. Frazier edited and reported for five daily newspapers in the South, including his hometown newspaper, the Post and Courier in Charleston. He has led journalism workshops in Sierra Leone, Zambia, Ghana, Suriname, Guyana, and The Gambia. He was a visiting lecturer at Rhodes University in Grahamstown, South Africa. Frazier is also the former marketing director at Magnolia Plantation and Gardens in Charleston.
