On June 26, 2024, Joseph McGill presented “Sleeping with the Ancestors in Mississippi” as part of the History Is Lunch series.
In 2010 McGill founded the Slave Dwelling Project to bring attention to the neglected and forgotten places where enslaved people spent significant portions of their lives—the structures they lived in. As a way to connect to those enslaved people, McGill sleeps overnight in the former slave dwellings.
Since founding the project, McGill has toured the country and spent nights in former slave dwellings not just in the South, but also the North and the West, where people are often surprised to learn that such structures exist.
“I’ve visited sites across Mississippi, including Columbus, Natchez, Holly Springs, the University of Mississippi, and Rowan Oak in Oxford,” said McGill, co-author of the book Sleeping with the Ancestors: How I Followed the Footprints of Slavery. “I’m interested to compare and contrast how slavery looked in Mississippi and in the rest of the antebellum nation.”
Publishers Weekly called the book a “far-ranging and vibrant account … 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.”
Joseph McGill is a former field officer for the National Trust for Historic Preservation, where he worked to revitalize the Sweet Auburn commercial district in Atlanta and to develop a management plan for the Mississippi Delta National Heritage Area. He is a former executive director of the African American Museum in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, and a former director of history and culture at Penn Center, St. Helena Island, South Carolina. McGill has also served as a National Park Service park ranger at Fort Sumter National Monument in Charleston. An Air Force veteran, McGill earned his BA in Professional English from South Carolina State University.
History Is Lunch is a weekly lecture series of the Mississippi Department of Archives and History that explores all aspects of the state’s past. The hour-long programs are held in the Craig H. Neilsen Auditorium of the Museum of Mississippi History and Mississippi Civil Rights Museum building at 222 North Street in Jackson and livestreamed on YouTube and Facebook.
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