This Story Is Not Mine; It is Theirs: A Guest Post from Joseph McGill Jr. Author of Sleeping with the Ancestors: How I Followed the Footprints of Slavery

By Joseph McGill Jr. / June 19, 2023 at 2:55 am

Hardcover $29.00

Sleeping with the Ancestors: How I Followed the Footprints of Slavery

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Hardcover $29.00

For two hundred nights, over twelve years, Joseph McGill has “slept rough” in former slave dwellings in twenty-five states, all for a great cause. This historian — and re-enactor — knows the power of “place” to make history real; his mission is to give witness, prompt meaningful conversation, to save an essential history of the nation. For readers who loved Clint Smith’s How the Word Is Passed or the travels of Tony Horwitz, Sleeping With the Ancestors should be your next read! Discover more about Joseph McGill Jr.’s experience after launching the Slave Dwelling Project in this guest post.

On Mother’s Day weekend in 2010, I launched the Slave Dwelling Project with a simple act of spending one night in a slave cabin at Magnolia Plantation and Gardens in Charleston, South Carolina, to call attention to the preservation of the homes of enslaved people who shaped America’s culture and economy.

The impetus for that first night in Magnolia’s slave cabin has since propelled me — far beyond my initial expectations — into the homes of U.S. presidents, government-owned parks and places where enslaved people rebelled against slavery. I’ve collaborated with Southern garden clubs to tell the story of the enslaved who lived behind grand antebellum mansions.

I’ve gathered with Black families during reunions at plantations where their ancestors were enslaved. I’ve shared slave quarters with the descendants of slaveowners. I have also spent a night in a slave quarters with staff members at the Hempstead Houses in New London, Connecticut, as the site held a Juneteenth commemoration in 2021, the year Juneteenth became a federal holiday.

I’ve logged more than 200 nights in slave dwellings at historic sites in twenty-five states and the District of Columbia. Now you can join my journey in Sleeping with the Ancestors: How I Followed the Footprints of Slavery. Along with my co-author — Charleston, South Carolina, journalist Herb Frazier — we tell the story of a future U.S. president who fathered a child with one of his family’s enslaved women. We chronicle the path of an enslaved boy who purchased his freedom to then establish a prominent black religious organization. We share the compelling history of an African princess who survived slavery in Florida to take control of a plantation and its enslaved workers.

During my travels, I have convened frank fireside conversations with people of all races. At times, these talks have become heated, requiring me to carefully calm the debate. These are some of the intriguing and complicated stories of race and slavery you’ll explore beginning June 6 when Sleeping with the Ancestors is released by Hachette Book Group.

Shortly after I began sleeping in slave cabins, then-South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford encouraged me to “keep up the good work” to raise awareness of the dwindling number of slave cabins.

I received Sanford’s letter a few days before I spent a night in September 2010 at Mansfield Plantation on the Black River in Georgetown County, South Carolina, down river from my hometown of Kingstree, South Carolina. Built in 1718, Mansfield is recognized as one of the most architecturally intact rice plantations in the state.

Mansfield’s owners are among the scores of site managers and property owners who’ve graciously opened their gates so I can tell the stories of the African ancestors. I am likely a descendant of enslaved people. The telltale signs of their existence are seen at marked and unmarked graves, ax marks in wooden beams, fingerprints in bricks, and the antebellum built environment made possible by their stolen labor. This story is not mine; it is theirs.