Sleeping with the Ancestors
How I Followed the Footprints of Slavery
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5.0 • 1 Rating
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- $11.99
Publisher 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.
APPLE BOOKS REVIEW
Historic preservationist and Civil War reenactor Joseph McGill Jr. takes a deeply personal look at the darker side of American history. A descendant of enslaved Black Americans, McGill visited former slave dwellings across the United States, sleeping in over 200 homes, often with a club by his side. He writes about each of these locations in tangible detail and provides us with piercing insights along the way, like the fact that Jefferson Davis kept over 700 people enslaved and the tradition among enslaved people of burying their loved ones next to rivers so that their souls could be carried home across the ocean. With reverential respect for history and all of its complicated, traumatic facets, Sleeping with the Ancestors shines a light on how America’s enslaved families lived, loved, and survived.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
As the founder of the Slave Dwelling Project, historic preservationist McGill has not only raised funds and awareness in support of the preservation of enslaved people's dwellings but has stayed overnight in more than 200 of these structures across 25 states. He recounts these visits in a far-ranging and vibrant account (coauthored with journalist Frazier) that effortlessly shifts between personal recollections of McGill's own life, including time spent as a Civil War reenactor that helped develop his appreciation for historic buildings and detailed descriptions of his overnight visits; focused micro-histories of the far-flung regions of the U.S. that are the sites of these dwellings; and the intimate stories of the enslaved people who lived in them, such as Sterling Jones, the last person to live in a slave cabin on the grounds of Virginia's Sweet Briar College, which opened in 1906 with marketing materials that included promotional photos of the "picturesque" cabin. This highly readable chronicle emphasizes that slavery was truly a national phenomenon in antebellum America (slave accommodations were located not only on Southern plantations but in all major cities) and reclaims the meaning of these "sacred spaces" of African American history. The result is both an enthralling narrative and a powerful educational tool.
