Have you ever wondered what it’s like to sleep in a slave cabin? In Sleeping with the Ancestors: How I Followed the Footprints of Slavery, an enlightening personal account, Joseph McGill tells the story of his groundbreaking project to sleep overnight in former slave dwellings that still stand across the country—revealing the fascinating history behind these sites and shedding light on larger issues of race in America.
When Joseph McGill set out in 2010 to accomplish a personal goal of sleeping in South Carolina’s extant slave cabins, he didn’t know this adventure would turn into 250 overnights in approximately 150 different sites in 25 states and the District of Columbia, encouraging him to create The Slave Dwelling Project, a nonprofit organization dedicated to preserving extant slave dwellings and to sharing the stories of those that once lived in them.
McGill recounts key sites from his “sleepovers,” as he calls them, and the histories of the people that used them. The story that most resonated with me was that of Anna Madgigine Jai Kingsley, a native of what is now Senegal and thought to be a princess. Kingsley was kidnapped as a teenager and shipped to Cuba where she was purchased by Zephaniah Kingsley who then made her his wife. But her story doesn’t end there. Anna ended up becoming one of the most successful Florida plantation owners in her own right until American forces invaded Spanish Florida, forcing Anna to burn her plantation and home and flee to Haiti.
Also be sure to check out Slave Voyages: The Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade Database to learn about tens of thousands of Trans-Atlantic and Intra-American slave voyages, including the names of enslaved Africans, ship names, and locations of embarkation and debarkation.
Information Specialist - MLIS
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