Sleeping with the Ancestors

How I Followed the Footprints of Slavery

By: Joseph McGill Jr., Herb Frazier

Narrated by: Joseph McGill Jr., Herb Frazier

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.

Critic reviews

“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 Sleeping with the Ancestors will further that goal by serving as a tremendous historical reference from which all can learn.”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

Read in print then purchased audio to hear it too

I’ve research dwellings of enslaved families in the past but reading this snd then getting to hear it read by the author himself brought new meaning and resonance to all the statistics and oral histories that I’ve read in other books and documents. Thank you for sharing this powerful lived experience with the communities you met with , and shared nights with, in person and for documenting it so beautifully for us all to read.

Giving Honor Where Honor is Due

Thank you for elevating the spaces where people with hopes, dreams, tears and fears gave expression to their time on this earth. The accounts of the author's experience and the families of those once enslaved hopefully will inspire the listeners to continue to pursue truth, and justice.

great documentation and expression of Black and While American History

accountability and responsibility (rinse and repeat, rinse and repeat, rinse and repeat, rinse and repeat, rinse and repeat)....your history and your story!

The ancestors are smiling

This book was very interesting. It’s amazing that someone could come up with this idea. I’m glad he did because it was one of my favorite books. I want to visit slave cabins

Timely

An exceptional and enlightening and often overlooked as aspect of America’s foundational early history of chattel slavery of African Americans. McGill’s eye opening journey told through his experiences of sleeping in slave dwellings allows the listener to imagine what the lives of these voiceless African Americans must have been in a compelling and emotional way. An important work.