
Sleeping with the Ancestors
How I Followed the Footprints of Slavery
Hachette Books (Publisher)
Published on 22. June 2023
Book
Hardback
352 pages
978-0-306-82966-6 (ISBN)
Description
Joseph McGill Jr., a historic preservationist and Civil War reenactor, founded the Slave Dwelling Project in 2010 based on an idea that was sparked and first developed in 1999.
Since founding the project, McGill has been touring the country, spending the night in former slave dwellings-throughout the South, but also the North and the West, where people are often surprised to learn that such structures 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. The project has inspired difficult conversations about race in communities from South Carolina to Alabama to Texas to Minnesota to New York, and all over the United States.
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. Altogether, McGill and co-author Herb Frazier give readers an important unexpected emersion into the history of slavery, and especially the obscured and ignored aspects of that history.
Since founding the project, McGill has been touring the country, spending the night in former slave dwellings-throughout the South, but also the North and the West, where people are often surprised to learn that such structures 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. The project has inspired difficult conversations about race in communities from South Carolina to Alabama to Texas to Minnesota to New York, and all over the United States.
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. Altogether, McGill and co-author Herb Frazier give readers an important unexpected emersion into the history of slavery, and especially the obscured and ignored aspects of that history.
More details
Language
English
Place of publication
United States
Publishing group
Little, Brown & Company
Target group
College/higher education
Professional and scholarly
Product notice
sewn/stitched
Cloth over boards
Illustrations
8-pg 4/C insert
Dimensions
Height: 257 mm
Width: 180 mm
Thickness: 28 mm
Weight
567 gr
ISBN-13
978-0-306-82966-6 (9780306829666)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Other editions
Additional editions

Joseph McGill Jr. | Herb Frazier
Sleeping with the Ancestors
How I Followed the Footprints of Slavery
E-Book
06/2023
Grand Central Publishing
€9.49
Available for download
Persons
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.