“Sleeping with the Ancestors: How I Followed the Footprints of Slavery" by Joseph McGill Jr. and Herb Frazier is a powerful exploration of history, heritage, and the enduring impact of slavery. McGill's unique journey, as he sleeps in preserved slave dwellings across the United States, becomes a compelling narrative that bridges the past and present. The book is a poignant reminder of the importance of acknowledging and preserving the stories of those who were enslaved. Frazier's collaboration adds depth with historical context, creating a rich tapestry that intertwines personal experiences and broader societal reflections. "Sleeping with the Ancestors" is a profound and thought-provoking work that contributes to the ongoing conversation about racial history, making it an essential read for anyone interested in understanding and confronting the legacy of slavery.

Interesting book how this man went around different places. He was a black man and he started to sleep in the slave cabinets. This was interesting because there's a lot of stuff. Went on with this opened my eyes to a lot of different things, which we didn't really look at in the past.. There's a lot of history in this book, especially about the plantations and how they were run. Thomas Jefferson house was interesting because on the old days. They would never talk about the slave caverns. But as history changed, they started to talk about it. Some people are uncomfortable with this. But I think it's really interesting when you bring this up and to show people how there's two sides of the story. I like how we did the different groups and tours. And he explained the area around where he was gonna stay that night. A lot of our founding fathers had slaves because it was acceptable behavior in those days. But people really don't like to talk about that because they just don't.. I think the college campus named crimson was a slave plantation at one time. And how they turned it around for learning. People probably don't realize that. They also talked about the different cemeteries. How they're trying to preserve those as well. Because a lot of them want to be developed. These cabins are somewhere in good shape and summer or not. They're trying to preserve them as well.

I am a member of the ALA Carnegie Medal Committee. This title was suggested for the 2024 Award but it did not make the Longlist. See the complete longlist <a href="https://www.ala.org/rusa/awards/carnegie-medals/2024-winners"> here.

An excellent [if sometimes a teeny-bit dry] and timely book about how the author, in a time of anger, discovered he wanted to learn more about his ancestors by locating and sleeping in slave home/quarters/dwellings that still can be found all over the south, and all he has since learned, discovered, created [The Slave Dwelling Project], and all that he is still fighting for and from all that, with help from Herb Frazier, decided to write this book so others could learn as well and think about their ancestors and how the fight is never over.

I learned so much reading this book, and I admire the author very much for what he has done and what he continues to do to bring the truth to light and to educate those who have never really learned about slavery and what it was TRULY about.

A must read for any historian and for anyone who is also engaged in the fight for the truth to be taught and the fight for equality for all.

Thank you to NetGalley, Joseph McGill Jr., Herb Frazier, and Hachette Books for providing this ARC in exchange for an honest review.

I received an ARC for this book. As a Canadian with Caribbean immigrant parents, I really learned a lot about slavery in the US. The author describes his journey sleeping in former slave dwellings throughout the US. He shares many historical facts of events and stories of enslaved people. Our schools barely taught us about slavery in the states, so this was a great introduction of this topic. I could feel the raw emotions of some of the participants in the program. I encourage anyone of African American descent to read this book.

Thank you for the ARC. This was so well written and informative. I don't live in an area with documented slave history so my historic research (which mainly stays in this county) is severely lacking. You can't be a fully formed civic minded adult without knowing these things.
I am incredibly uncomfortable with the confederate flag, even as a white woman, because it feels hostile. It feels like a threat. I can't explain it but it makes my blood turn cold. I admire the author for being okay attending events where the flag is displayed.

This was an incredible book. Joseph McGill started the Slave Dwelling Project. He traveled the country sleeping in former slave dwellings. Most were on plantations but some were in places that surprised me, such as colleges. Colleges built with slave labor. Fort Snelling, MN was one location he traveled to. Minnesota is such a “new” state, I never thought of slavery happening there. Mr. McGill names many Presidents that were slave owners. He does not sugarcoat history. Thank God. I am so tired of only being told the good or not so bad things. Bad things happened and they are part of history. I have found no enslavers in my family tree but that doesn’t mean they weren’t there. I should say I’ve found no proof. My family was at Jamestown so it’s very possible. After reading this, I’d like to visit some of the locations mentioned. I’d like to look for fingerprints in the bricks. People built those places and should be acknowledged, and I’m not referring to those that ordered the building. I’m speaking of those that did the back breaking work against their will. The enslaved. Read the book. Educate yourself.
I received a free copy of this book and am reviewing it voluntarily.

As I began reading this book, I got serious Confederate in the Attic vibes; I'm glad McGill calls out Tony Horowitz in the first couple of chapters because I think reading them together could be really powerful. However, for those who aren't familiar with that style of writing, Sleeping with the Ancestors is what I might best describe as "exploratory history" in which one person, using a strong journalistic lens, writes about the overlap between history and his own experiences. It's deeply a humanizing read that gives history buffs (and really Americans overall) a sense of their history from a experiential point of view. It's pretty clear that history is not done and over, and that the past continues to influence us all in ways we may not recognize. Perhaps that's McGill's greatest gift in this book.
There are some points at this book that may possibly make your mind start to wonder and/or make you uncomfortable, but I think both of those feelings are create to McGill's exploration of the impact of the past on the present.
Some people might think of this, at first glance, as some tome adding to the current culture wars on history and race, but leave your preconceived biases aside when you read, and you'll find out there's more that's being said. In other words, don't go into it looking for a fight, because I don't think McGill is trying to start one. What he is trying to do is help us link those voices from the past, forgotten souls living their day to day lives between the walls he visits, to our identity today.

The premise of this book is promising: a man grappling with slavery in the US decides to sleep in surviving "slave cabins"--the shelters where enslaved people were forced to live--and document his experiences. But in addition to one sleepover being much like another, the author's wandering focus and long asides without clear connections to the premise or anything else is terribly distracting. If the author dictated this as an oral history account, it would make more sense that there are these issues. But that doesn't seem to be the case, in which case this needs a lot of editing. It was a real disappointment.

I was not familiar with the Slave Dwelling Project before reading Sleeping with the Ancestors, and I found this book to be a fascinating introduction to an amazing project. The authors do a great job describing the project and its purpose, and it was so interesting to read about all the different locations where McGill Jr. has stayed over the course of the project. Definitely recommended for anyone who is interested in US history!

"Sacred spaces can serve as classrooms."

"Sleeping with the Ancestors" chronicles the author's experiences over the last decade plus as he endeavours to locate extant slave dwellings across the United States and spend a night sleeping in each one. The author, Joseph McGill Jr, is a Black historian, preservationist and Civil War re-enactor who initially envisioned a small scale one-year project limited to his home state, but the scope quickly expanded as publicity grew. The Slave Dwelling Project, as it is now called, has resulted in him spending more than 200 nights at former slave dwellings in both Northern and Southern states with the goal of honouring the ancestors and their connection and presence to the land. His nights now often include educational lectures and school tours as well as having various guests such as historians, journalists, and descendants of both the enslaved and the enslavers join him on the sleepover.

Having worked for various historical preservation societies, McGill noticed that there was a trend among historic building projects to focus funding on preserving the main houses that had visual architectural importance while ignoring extant slave dwellings on the premises by relegating them with titles like out-buildings or sheds that hide their true significance in telling the stories of the experience of enslaved people in America. Following a visit to the Anne Frank House in Amsterdam, he was increasingly convicted of the importance of preserving these types of historic sites because "old buildings tell the story of the people who found shelter in them." His Slave Dwelling Project has now encompassed dwellings that represent both rural plantation slavery as well as the lesser represented urban slavery detailing how enslaved people lived and worked in cities and college campuses in both Northern and Southern states. McGill uses a combination of land and property records as well as quoting extensively from oral histories (such as the WPA Federal Writers' Project) to powerfully recreate the history and lives of enslaved people who may have lived in each of the dwellings that he describes visiting.

Overall I found this book to be quite fascinating. I had heard of the Slave Dwelling Project in passing in some of the online genealogy communities that I am a part of, so I was very interested to get the full background about the origins and growth of the project. I found the tone of the book quite conversational and readable despite dealing with obviously emotionally heavy topics. I deeply appreciated how McGill was willing to be both physically and psychologically uncomfortable and takes us along on his own journey of personal growth as he learns from the people and places he visits throughout this project.

I would recommend this book to readers who are interested in learning more about Black history in America, people who have enjoyed books like "Freedom Libraries: The Untold Story of Libraries for African Americans in the South" by Mike Selby or "Barracoon: The Story of the Last "Black Cargo"" by Zora Neale Hurston, and anyone with an interest in the preservation and management of museums and historic sites. If you are someone with an interest in genealogy, particularly with an interest in how to honour, respect, and balance the good and bad parts of our ancestors' stories, I think you would really enjoy this book as well.

The one feature that I really felt this book was missing was photos. I don't know if the physical copy will have photo inserts, but the eARC that I read had neither photos throughout or a dedicated photo section and I think having some visuals of the places that the author visited would have made an even greater impact.

*DISCLAIMER: I received an eARC of this book from Hachette Books through NetGalley for the purposes of providing an unbiased review.*

As the description for this book "Sleeping with the Ancestors" by Joseph McGill Jr. and Herb Frazier states, the premise that Joseph McGill Jr. devised a project in which to sleep overnight in former dwellings of enslaved people of African descent in the United States that still stand across the country. McGill is a historic preservationist and Civil War re-enactor who founded the Slave Dwelling Project in 2010 based on an idea developed a decade before. People make many assumptions about the dwellings of the enslaved people of African descent who lived and worked on plantation properties across the United States. While it is true that per capita, the Southern states like Louisiana, Georgia, and South Carolina have a higher number of plantation properties or remnants of what were properties that were burned down during or after the Civil War, fell into a state of disrepair and so on, there needs to be a challenge so that people can understand there are these dwellings of the enslaved in the North and the West.

Transatlantic slavery in the United States was not solely relegated to the Southern states. Even before Massachusetts and New York, Rhode Island, New Jersey, Ohio, etc, became the states that closer to the time of the Civil War were known as non-slaveholding states, as in they did not allow the practice of enslavement to go on, things were not always that way. These states used to have enslavement and enslaved people of African descent. They changed that, but unless people have looked into the history, they tend not to realize that New York, for instance, or Rhode Island, were not always the non-slaveholding safe havens that they later became known as. If we want to go even broader, for the people who don't know that slavery existed in Canada well into the first part of the nineteenth century, it became abolished only in 1834 because England had abolished it and Canada, as a country of the Dominion of Great Britain, followed suit--not because of some altruistic understanding that slavery was fundamentally wrong and corrupt and inhumane.

I was intrigued when I read about the premise of the book -- especially in light of the pernicious usage of plantation properties in the modern era as "luxury, Southern comfort, lavish Airbnb getaways." Airbnb has since apologized publicly for allowing people to list these properties on their website and profit from the murder and horrors of these plantations, which were concentration camps. One such Airbnb host had listed a dwelling of an enslaved person or "slave cabin" where one of the enslaved families who were forced to be on this plantation property would have lived and slept, but also lived in terror that the plantation owner could come to them at any time, day or night, and force himself sexually onto one or more of the women and girls who he owned, as often as he wanted to, as repeatedly as he wanted to. The terror of not having enough nutritious food to eat, or of access to water, to cleaning. And far, far worse.

McGill went into this project with all of that knowledge and of the living trauma that seeps through those walls.
He starts off talking about the Magnolia Plantation, invited to a private ceremony to honour the African ancestors in 2009. He faced mixed reactions, including from his family, who feared that some harm might befall him.

<blockquote>My first three overnight stays were scheduled for Magnolia Plantation and Gardens, the Heyward House in Bluffton, and McLeod Plantation on James Island near Charleston. All lie within a culturally important geographic region for Gullah Geechee people, the descendants of enslaved West Africans. In 2006 Congress passed an act that created the Gullah Geechee Cultural Heritage Corridor along the coastal lowlands from Wilmington, North Carolina, through South Carolina and Georgia to St. Augustine, Florida. In Georgia and Florida, people of African descent prefer the term Geechee to describe themselves and their culture.</blockquote>

He then expands to providing details of all of the things that people might not realize about much larger plantations, like Monticello--yes, former President Thomas Jefferson's home, yes the one built by enslaved people. Yes, the same one where many white visitors routinely complain that they don't want to hear about all that "slavery stuff" and don't want to hear anything negative about Jefferson's troubled past.

McGill talks about the logistical difficulties in figuring out how to actually enact this project that he wanted to do, the on-the-ground "this is how I'm going to do this" parts, and it is definitely interesting. People might have expected McGill to provide some kind of a memoir that recounts his diary-like entries of experiences after having stayed at dwellings of the enslaved, but this book is so much more than that. Highly recommended.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for the advance e-arc.

Overall, this is a very even-handed discussion of the topic. The author comes incredibly credentialed for a book covering this topic. He tells the stories of the ancestors well and is sure to include the others involved in making his project come to life. The book covers sensitive and divisive topics, but the author deftly handles the conversation in a manner which leaves room for thoughtful contemplation and evaluation.

Fascinating and hugely important read. I will recommend this to everyone as it will add to the knowledge base of anyone that’s will to pick it up. It’s not for the faint of heart though. Definitely a difficult truth to face.

An important, unique work. Sleeping with the Ancestors details the Slave Dwelling Project. The author’s work to honor enslaved ancestors who lived and were forced to live in cabins, quarters, and parts of homes through nights spent in them. The project is just as important in 2023 as it was when it started in 2010 and the book leaves the reader hoping that it will continue for years to come.
The narrative and primary source material about the people who were enslaved was the most compelling for me. Look for excerpts from the Depression era WPA Slave Narrative Project throughout the book. Although the author identifies a bias in this source, it provides unique primarily source material that is used effectively throughout the book.

A one of a kind project that I believe deserves more recognition and publicity. This book was gripping as it made me want to learn even more about the author and his decades long project.

this was a interesting concept for a nonfiction book, it really does a great job in bringing history to life. It had what I was looking for from the description and was invested in the historical journey. I could tell the passion of the topic in the writing. It worked overall and I enjoyed reading this.