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Sleeping with the Ancestors
How I Followed the Footprints of Slavery
Description
In this enlightening personal account, one man tells the story of his groundbreaking project to sleep in former slave dwellings—revealing the fascinating history behind these sites and shedding light on larger issues of race in America.
Since founding the Slave Dwelling Project project in 2010, historic preservationist Joseph McGill Jr. 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. 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.
Since founding the Slave Dwelling Project project in 2010, historic preservationist Joseph McGill Jr. 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. 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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Praise
“In this gripping personal account, Joseph McGill Jr., and Herb Frazier seek to deepen and broaden our understanding of the horrors our African American ancestors endured for generations by chronicling McGill’s experiences sleeping in former slave dwellings. I firmly believe that our history must be told and should be understood if we are to avoid repeating our worst mistakes. Sleeping with the Ancestors will further that goal by serving as a tremendous historical reference from which all can learn.”
—Congressman James E. Clyburn
“Scripture teaches to do justice, love kindness, and walk humbly (Micah 6:8). Joe McGill walks the walk, and his hands-on, day-and-night journey inspires—one dwelling at a time. Few have done more than this determined South Carolinian to heal the scars of enslavement and lead us back—all of us—to the generations of ancestors whose unpaid labor shaped America. I feel lucky to have slept on some hard floors, seeing him stir the embers, share the meal, and invite the conversations that we all need to have.”
—Peter H. Wood, Duke University historian, author of Black Majority and Strange New Land
"A soul-stirring memoir by a modern-day crusader who confronts our Nation's original sin to save forgotten national historic treasures in tribute to our enslaved ancestors who dwelled in them."
—Dr. Edda L. Fields-Black, Carnegie Mellon University historian and author of Combee: Harriet Tubman, the Combahee River Raid, and Black Freedom During the Civil War