Walter Edgar's Journal: Sleeping with the ancestors - The Slave Dwelling Project

Two of four slave cabins restored at Magnolia Plantation and Gardens in Charleston. May 17, 2023(Victoria Hansen / South Carolina Public Radio)

This week we're talking with Joseph McGill and Herb Frazier, authors of Sleeping with the Ancestors: How I Followed the Footprints of Slavery.

Since founding the Slave Dwelling Project in 2010, Joseph McGill has been spending the night in slave dwellings throughout the South, but also the North and the West, where people are often surprised to learn that such structures exist. Events and gatherings arranged around these overnight stays have provided a unique way to understand the complex history of slavery. McGill and Frazier talk with us about how the project got started and about the sometimes obscured or ignored aspects of the history in the United States.