Buxton Books is proud to be the bookseller for the paperback release of Sleeping with the Ancestors with authors Joseph McGill Jr. and Herb Frazier. Joining Joseph and Herb in conversation will be Dr. Sydney Lewis, collaborator on the new, paperback exclusive reading group guide. The conversation will be moderated by Dr. Tamara T. Butler.
This will be a free talk starting at 6:00 pm at the Cynthia Graham Hurd St. Andrews Library (1735 N. Woodmere Dr.). Book signing to follow!
SAVE THE DATE NOW! More information coming soon.
About Sleeping with the Ancestors:
With a new Afterword and Reading Group Guide exclusive to the paperback edition.
In this enlightening personal account, one man 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.
Joseph McGill Jr., a historic preservationist and Civil War reenactor, founded the Slave Dwelling Project in 2010 based on an idea that was sparked and first developed in 1999. Since founding the project, McGill has been touring the country, spending the night in former 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 are arranged around these overnight stays, and it provides a unique way to understand the often otherwise obscured and distorted history of slavery. The project has inspired difficult conversations about race in communities from South Carolina to Alabama to Texas to Minnesota to New York, and all over the United States.
Sleeping with the Ancestors focuses on all of the key sites McGill has visited in his ongoing project and digs deeper into the actual history of each location, using McGill’s own experience and conversations with the community to enhance those original stories. Altogether, McGill and coauthor Herb Frazier give readers an important unexpected emersion into the history of slavery, and especially the obscured and ignored aspects of that history.
About Joseph McGill Jr:
Mr. Joseph McGill, Jr., is the founder of the Slave Dwelling Project and a former history consultant for Magnolia Plantation in Charleston, S.C.
By arranging for people to sleep in extant slave dwellings, the Slave Dwelling Project has brought much needed attention to these often-neglected structures that are vitally important to the American built environment. Mr. McGill has conducted over 250 overnights in approximately 150 different sites in 25 states and the District of Columbia. He has interacted with the descendants of both the enslaved communities and of the enslavers associated with antebellum historic sites.
He speaks with school children and college students, with historical societies, community groups, and members of the public.
Since 2016, Mr. McGill expanded the Slave Dwelling Project to offer a program of living history called “Inalienable Rights: Living History Through the Eyes of the Enslaved.” The Project has conducted 7 conferences since 2013.
Mr. McGill is a Civil War Reenactor who participates in living history presentations and lectures. Mr. McGill was a field officer for the National Trust for Historic Preservation, working to revitalize the Sweet Auburn commercial district in Atlanta, Ga., and to develop a management plan for the Mississippi Delta National Heritage Area.
Mr. McGill served as the Executive Director of the African American Museum located in Cedar Rapids, Iowa. His responsibilities included seeking funds from grant making entities to support the capital and operating budget of the museum/cultural center and developing programs that interpret the history of African Americans.
Mr. McGill is the former Director of History and Culture at Penn Center, St. Helena Island, South Carolina. Penn School was the first school built during the Civil War for the education of recently freed slaves. As director, he was responsible for the overall development and implementation of the center’s program for collecting, preserving, and making public the history of Penn Center and the Sea Island African American history and culture.
Mr. McGill was also employed by the National Park Service, serving as a park ranger at Fort Sumter National Monument in Charleston, South Carolina. As a park ranger, Mr. McGill gave oral presentations on Fort Sumter and Fort Moultrie on and off site. He supervised volunteers and participated in living history presentations.
Mr. McGill appears in the book Confederates in the Attic by Tony Horwitz. He is also a member of the South Carolina Humanities Council Speakers Bureau.
Mr. McGill is co-author of the book: Sleeping with the Ancestors: How I Followed the Footprints of Slavery.
Mr. McGill is a native of Kingstree, South Carolina. Upon graduating from high school, he enlisted in the United States Air Force. While in the Air Force, Mr. McGill served as security policeman in England, Washington State and Germany.
Mr. McGill holds a Bachelor of Arts degree in Professional English from South Carolina State University, Orangeburg, South Carolina. He is married to the former Vilarin Mozee, and they have one daughter, Jocelyn Mozee McGill.
About Herb Frazier:
Herb Frazier is a Charleston, South Carolina-based writer. He’s a senior editor for the Charleston City Paper, and the former marketing director at Magnolia Plantation and Gardens in Charleston. Before he joined Magnolia, Frazier edited and reported for five daily newspapers in the South, including his hometown paper, The Post and Courier.
He is the 2024 recipient of the Brookgreen Gardens’s Huntington Exemplary Service Award. In 1990, the South Carolina Press Association named him Journalist of the Year. He has taught news writing as a visiting lecturer at Rhodes University in South Africa. He is a former Michigan Journalism Fellow at the University of Michigan. He studied journalism at the University of South Carolina.
After leaving daily journalism in 2006, Herb led journalism workshops in Sierra Leone, Zambia, Ghana, Suriname, Guyana and The Gambia for the U.S. government and a Washington-based journalism foundation.
Herb’s international reporting includes West Germany during the fall of the Berlin Wall, humanitarian post-war relief efforts in Bosnia and Rwanda during its post-genocide recovery, social and political issues in Japan and South Korea and Cuba’s cultural ties with Florida and Lowcountry South Carolina.
He also reported on the conflict in Sierra Leone. Herb has written about the historical and cultural ties between West Africa and the Gullah Geechee people of coastal South Carolina and Georgia.
Herb represented South Carolina on the Gullah Geechee Cultural Heritage Corridor Commission, created by the U.S. Congress in 2006. He also served as secretary of the Jazz Artists of Charleston, which supports the Charleston Jazz Orchestra.
He is the author of Behind God’s Back: Gullah Memories. He is a co-author of We Are Charleston: Tragedy and Triumph at Mother Emanuel with Marjory Wentworth and Dr. Bernard Powers Jr.
Herb also co-edited a collection of poems and essays titled Ukweli: (pronounced – you ̶ quail – lee) Searching for Healing Truth, South Carolina Writers and Poets Explore American Racism with the late Horace Mungin.
Herb’s latest book, Sleeping with the Ancestors: How I Followed the Footprints of Slavery, is a collaboration with Joseph McGill, founder of the Slave Dwelling Project. Herb’s forthcoming book, Crossing the Sea on a Sacred Song, tells the story of an African funeral song that links a Georgia family with a woman in Sierra Leone.
About Dr. Sydney Lewis:
Dr. Sydney Lewis is a lecturer in The Harriet Tubman Department of Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies at the University of Maryland. Lewis’s areas of interest include Black feminist theory and culture, Black queer theory, “mad” studies and disability justice, and intersectional Black liberation. Through an interdisciplinary approach, Lewis’s research and teaching strives to blur the boundaries between the academy, art, and activism. When Lewis isn’t teaching, she’s watching bad television, curled up with her cats, or thrift shopping.
About Dr. Tamara T. Butler:
Named as one of South Carolina’s Black Leaders to Know (2022), Dr. Tamara T. Butler is the Executive Director of the Avery Research Center for African American History and Culture and Associate Dean of Strategic Planning & Community Engagement for the College of Charleston Libraries. For more than a decade, Dr. Butler has focused on efforts at the intersections of ecological and educational equity, with a focus on community building, Black histories and cultural productions. Currently, she also serves as a commissioner for the Gullah Geechee Cultural Heritage Corridor, a board member for the Coastal Conservation League, a trustee for the National Council of English’s Research Foundation, and a member of the International African American Museum’s Board of Directors.
Growing up on Johns Island, South Carolina, Dr. Butler saw first-hand that community is cultivated through trust, responsibility and investment in the collective. Those lessons inform her approaches to service: committed listening, symbiotic partnerships, and creative and sustainable engagement. At the College of Charleston, she serves on the Executive Committee for the African American Studies Program and the advisory committee for the Center for Teaching and Learning. She also teaches courses on Decolonial land relations and Race, Gender & Environment for the Women’s & Gender Studies Program and Environmental and Sustainability Program at C of C. Since she is an avid traveler who believes in showing students our connections to global communities, she co-directed a study abroad program to England (2022) and Jamaica (2024).
As a Creative Writer who graduated from the Charleston County School of the Arts, Dr. Butler has an established track record as a community cultivator who has a way with words. She has authored a baker’s dozen of publications that explore youth activism, civic engagement, Black Girlhood, and placemaking. In her co-authored book, Where is the Justice? Engaged Pedagogies in Schools and Communities, Dr. Butler highlights transformative education that centers community partnerships, student voices, and creative educators. Over the past 3 years, she has served as an interlocutor of the Charleston Literary Festival, speaking with renowned authors such as Dr. Imani Perry, Safiya Sinclair, Latria Graham and Dasia Moore.
She earned a Bachelor of Science in Biochemistry) from Xavier University of Louisiana. With a Master of Arts in African American Studies, a Master of Arts in Education and a Doctor of Philosophy in Multicultural and Equity Studies in Education, she considers herself a triple alum of THE Ohio State University. As a first-generation college graduate, Dr. Butler deeply values opportunities to support and build with the next generation of creatives, leaders, and changemakers. Therefore, she has served as a faculty mentor of the Cultivating New Voices Among Scholars of Color Fellowship program and continues to serve as an informal mentor to students at and beyond the College of Charleston.
When she is not teaching barre or repotting plants, she can be found curled up with a good book and snacks. To keep up with Dr. Butler’s endeavors, feel free to follow her on Instagram: @director_dean_tt.