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.

About the Author
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.


Book Information
ISBN 9780306829666
Author Herb Frazier
Format Hardback
Page Count 352
Imprint Da Capo Press Inc
Publisher Hachette Books
Weight(grams) 560g
Dimensions(mm) 230mm * 160mm * 36mm