by Joseph McGill | May 18, 2019 | Blog Posts
Wait for it. Wait for it. Twelve of our former Presidents enslaved people. Until spending a night at Mount Vernon, members of the Slave Dwelling Project had slept at the homes of Presidents Andrew Jackson, James Madison, Thomas Jefferson, and James K. Polk in that...
by Joseph McGill | May 5, 2019 | Blog Posts
Many antebellum historic sites use the excuse of not having enough information about enslaved people as their reason for not including them in their narratives. What that has given us is a sugarcoated, watered down version of history at these sites. A history that...
by Joseph McGill | Apr 22, 2019 | Blog Posts
One Step Forward I have no qualms with Author William Faulkner, and I have no desire to besmirch his name. I’ve never read any of his books. I’m interested in him because, he lived at Rowan Oak in Oxford, Mississippi until he died in 1962. Who knows what would have...
by Joseph McGill | Apr 19, 2019 | Blog Posts
One can find many books written on architecturally significant antebellum big houses and the people who inhabited them. The propensity to focus on antebellum mansions have left a void in interpreting a vital part of American history. The part left out, slavery...
by Joseph McGill | Mar 20, 2019 | Blog Posts
I recall that at the onset of the Slave Dwelling Project in 2010, one of my unwritten rules was that I would only seek to spend nights in extant slave dwellings located in the places where they were originally built. As an employee of the National Trust for Historic...
by Joseph McGill | Mar 11, 2019 | Blog Posts
The year 2018 was great for the Slave Dwelling Project. I got to travel more with living historians as we traversed this nation visiting historic sites while chasing the footprints of slavery. Our applied method of sleeping in slave dwellings is now enhanced by living...
by Joseph McGill | Dec 2, 2018 | Blog Posts
Historic sites have the potential to be classrooms. For these sites to reach that potential, it takes creative thinking and people and entities interested in using these historic places in creative ways. A museum or historic home which allows people to touch things is...
by Joseph McGill | Nov 18, 2018 | Blog Posts
2011, the second year of the Slave Dwelling Project found me traveling to more out of state historic sites to sleep in the spaces that the enslaved Ancestors once inhabited. People began to realize that I wasn’t going away that easily. The footprints of slavery were...
by Joseph McGill | Nov 13, 2018 | Conference
If you did not attend the 5th Annual Slave Dwelling Project Conference, it is imperative that you click on the link to find out what you missed. You may want to print the content. There may come a time in the future when this information may cease to exist...
by Joseph McGill | Nov 6, 2018 | Blog Posts
If ever you entertain the thought of driving from Charleston, South Carolina to Princeton, NJ alone, I advise that you do not do so. I took on that task, I was successful, but that is something that I will not do again. That statement speaks highly of my quest to...
