Civil War reenactor Joseph McGill Jr. embarked on a one-year plan in 2010 to sleep in slave cabins in South Carolina. Twelve years later, McGill’s travels across the United States are chronicled in Sleeping with the Ancestors: How I Followed the Footprints of Slavery.
McGill’s simple act of spending one night in slave cabins in the Palmetto State eventually took him to 25 states and the District of Columbia in what became a palpable demonstration that slave dwellings are important artifacts that show how people of African descent have influenced America’s culture and economy.
McGill, founder of the Slave Dwelling Project co-wrote Sleeping with the Ancestors with Charleston City Paper senior editor Herb Frazier. Hachette Book Group in New York City is scheduled to release the book June 6.
“My travels have taken me to unexpected places where I’ve met some incredible people who, like me, want to tell the truth about how slavery has stained this country,” McGill told the City Paper. “But we should not lose sight that America’s original sin was the removal of indigenous people from their land to make way for European settlers.”
Frazier said McGill, a former program officer with the National Trust for Historic Preservation, used his passion as a preservationist to accomplish something that no one has done before.
“Joe has attracted a nationwide following of people who’ve spent nights in slave dwellings with him,” Frazier said. “They and many others now understand the importance of preserving these places where enslaved people lived. They know too that slave dwellings are not limited to the Southern landscape, but enslaved people also lived in dwellings in large and small cities across this country.”
McGill has visited places of higher education, the homes of U.S. presidents and government-owned parks that have a tie with slavery. He has slept in places where Black people rebelled against bondage. He has collaborated with Southern garden clubs to tell the story of enslaved people who lived behind grand antebellum mansions.
He also has gathered with Black families who’ve held reunions at plantations where their ancestors were enslaved. He has shared the quarters of enslaved people with the descendants of slave owners.
Opening conversations to heal
During his travels, McGill has convened frank fireside conversations with people of both races. At times, these talks have become heated, requiring McGill to skillfully calm the debate.
McGill, a native of Kingstree, began his journey in May 2010 at Magnolia Plantation and Gardens outside of Charleston where he currently leads slave cabin tours. In the Lowcountry, McGill has also slept in slave cabins at McLeod Plantation on James Island, Hobcaw Barony in Georgetown and the Heyward House in Bluffton. He also visited a freedmen cottage at Middleton Place. Before he launched the Slave Dwelling Project, McGill also spent a night in a brick slave cabin at Boone Hall in Mount Pleasant as part of a History Channel documentary. McGill is also founder of the Civil War reenactment group, the 54th Massachusetts Volunteer Regiment, Company I.
McGill “walks the walk”
Peter H. Wood, a retired Duke University historian and author of Black Majority: Negroes in Colonial South Carolina from 1670 through the Stono Rebellion. said, “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,” Wood said. “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.”
Shortly after McGill began sleeping in slave cabins, then-South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford wrote to McGill to encourage him to “keep up the good work” to raise awareness of the dwindling number of slave cabins.
McGill received Sanford’s letter a few days before he spent a night in September 2010 at Mansfield Plantation on the Black River in Georgetown County. Mansfield dates back to 1718. It is recognized as one of the most architecturally intact rice plantations in South Carolina.
Mansfield’s owners are among the scores of site managers and property owners who “graciously opened their gates so I can tell the stories of the African ancestors,” McGill said. “I am likely a descendant of enslaved people. The telltale signs of their existence are seen through their 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, but it is theirs.”
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