Sleeping with the Ancestors
How I Followed the Footprints of Slavery
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Narrated by:
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Joseph McGill Jr.
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Herb Frazier
About this listen
In this enlightening personal account, one man tells the story of his groundbreaking project to sleep in former slave dwellings—revealing the fascinating history behind these sites and shedding light on larger issues of race in America.
Since founding the Slave Dwelling Project project in 2010, historic preservationist Joseph McGill Jr. 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. 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.
Together, McGill and coauthor Herb Frazier give readers an important emersion into the history of slavery, and especially the obscured and ignored aspects of that history.
Contains a new afterword and reading group guide.
PLEASE NOTE: When you purchase this title, the accompanying PDF will be available in your Audible Library along with the audio.
©2023 Joseph McGill, Jr. and Herb Frazier (P)2023 Hachette BooksListeners also enjoyed...
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Critic reviews
“In this gripping personal account, Joseph McGill Jr., and Herb Frazier seek to deepen and broaden our understanding of the horrors our African American ancestors endured for generations by chronicling McGill’s experiences sleeping in former slave dwellings. I firmly believe that our history must be told and should be understood if we are to avoid repeating our worst mistakes. Sleeping with the Ancestors will further that goal by serving as a tremendous historical reference from which all can learn.” —Congressman James E. Clyburn
“Scripture teaches to do justice, love kindness, and walk humbly (Micah 6:8). Joe McGill walks the walk, and his hands-on, day-and-night journey inspires—one dwelling at a time. Few have done more than this determined South Carolinian to heal the scars of enslavement and lead us back—all of us—to the generations of ancestors whose unpaid labor shaped America. I feel lucky to have slept on some hard floors, seeing him stir the embers, share the meal, and invite the conversations that we all need to have.” —Peter H. Wood, Duke University historian, author of Black Majority and Strange New Land
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In the summer of 1860, more than 50 years after the United States legally abolished the international slave trade, 110 men, women, and children from Benin and Nigeria were brought ashore in Alabama under cover of night. They were the last recorded group of Africans deported to the United States as slaves. This book reconstructs the lives of the people in West Africa, recounts their capture and passage in the slave pen in Ouidah, and describes their experience of slavery alongside American-born enslaved men and women.
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Should be required reading in all schools.
- By Anonymous User on 12-31-21
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Master Slave Husband Wife
- An Epic Journey from Slavery to Freedom
- By: Ilyon Woo
- Narrated by: Janina Edwards, Leon Nixon
- Length: 12 hrs and 55 mins
- Unabridged
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In 1848, a year of international democratic revolt, a young, enslaved couple, Ellen and William Craft, achieved one of the boldest feats of self-emancipation in American history. Posing as master and slave, while sustained by their love as husband and wife, they made their escape together across more than 1,000 miles, riding out in the open on steamboats, carriages, and trains that took them from bondage in Georgia to the free states of the North.
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Necessary story well told!
- By Marc W Rhoades on 01-19-23
By: Ilyon Woo
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Self Made
- Inspired by the Life of Madam C.J. Walker
- By: A'Lelia Bundles
- Narrated by: A'Lelia Bundles
- Length: 16 hrs and 23 mins
- Unabridged
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The daughter of slaves, Madam C.J. Walker was orphaned at seven, married at 14, and widowed at 20. She spent the better part of the next two decades laboring as a washerwoman for $1.50 a week. Then - with the discovery of a revolutionary hair care formula for Black women - everything changed. By her death in 1919, Walker managed to overcome astonishing odds: Building a storied beauty empire from the ground up that would be run by four generations of Walker women until its sale in 1985.
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Please read the book and not rely on the Netflix series
- By Sweet Pea's Mommy on 04-27-20
By: A'Lelia Bundles
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Life of a Klansman
- A Family History in White Supremacy
- By: Edward Ball
- Narrated by: Edward Ball
- Length: 15 hrs and 26 mins
- Unabridged
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Life of a Klansman tells the story of a warrior in the Ku Klux Klan, a carpenter in Louisiana who took up the cause of fanatical racism during the years after the Civil War. Edward Ball, a descendant of the Klansman, paints a portrait of his family’s anti-Black militant that is part history, part memoir rich in personal detail.
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Thought Provoking, But . . .
- By William G. Stuart on 09-01-20
By: Edward Ball
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The Last Slave Ship
- The True Story of How Clotilda Was Found, Her Descendants, and an Extraordinary Reckoning
- By: Ben Raines
- Narrated by: Kevin R. Free
- Length: 8 hrs and 10 mins
- Unabridged
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Fifty years after the Atlantic slave trade was outlawed, the Clotilda became the last ship in history to bring enslaved Africans to the United States. The ship was scuttled and burned on arrival to hide the wealthy perpetrators to escape prosecution. Despite numerous efforts to find the sunken wreck, Clotilda remained hidden for the next 160 years. But in 2019, journalist Ben Raines made international news when he successfully concluded his obsessive quest through the swamps of Alabama to uncover one of our nation’s most important historical artifacts.
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Wow. Just Wow.
- By Pinkhippiechick on 02-11-22
By: Ben Raines
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We Are Each Other's Harvest
- Celebrating African American Farmers, Land, and Legacy
- By: Natalie Baszile
- Narrated by: Tina Lifford
- Length: 13 hrs and 41 mins
- Unabridged
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In this impressive anthology, Natalie Baszile brings together essays, poems, quotes, conversations, and first-person stories to examine Black people’s connection to the American land from Emancipation to today. We Are Each Other’s Harvest elevates the voices and stories of Black farmers and people of color, celebrating their perseverance and resilience, while spotlighting the challenges they continue to face. Luminous and eye-opening, this eclectic collection helps people and communities of color today reimagine what it means to be dedicated to the soil.
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Various Voices
- By Peggy Sweeney on 11-06-21
By: Natalie Baszile
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Lies Across America
- What Our Historic Sites Get Wrong
- By: Dr. James Loewen
- Narrated by: L.J. Ganser
- Length: 18 hrs and 29 mins
- Unabridged
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Lies Across America is a reality check for anyone who has ever sought to learn about America through the nation's public sites and markers. Entertaining and enlightening, it is destined to change the way American listeners see their country.
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some necessary repetition
- By TravellingCari on 09-20-24
By: Dr. James Loewen
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Denmark Vesey's Garden
- Slavery and Memory in the Cradle of the Confederacy
- By: Ethan J. Kytle, Blain Roberts
- Narrated by: Tom Perkins
- Length: 14 hrs and 33 mins
- Unabridged
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A book that strikes at the heart of the recent flare-ups over Confederate symbols in Charlottesville, New Orleans, and elsewhere, Denmark Vesey's Garden reveals the deep roots of these controversies and traces them to the heart of slavery in the United States: Charleston, South Carolina, where almost half of the US slave population stepped onto our shores, where the first shot at Fort Sumter began the Civil War, and where Dylann Roof shot nine people at Emanuel A.M.E. Church, the congregation of Denmark Vesey, a black revolutionary who plotted a massive slave insurrection.
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Timely, well-written and enlightening.
- By DG on 06-05-18
By: Ethan J. Kytle, and others
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Over My Dead Body
- Unearthing the Hidden History of American Cemeteries
- By: Greg Melville
- Narrated by: Will Tulin
- Length: 8 hrs and 42 mins
- Unabridged
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The summer before his senior year in college, Greg Melville worked at the cemetery in his hometown, and thanks to hour upon hour of pushing a mower over the grassy acres, he came to realize what a rich story the place told of his town and its history. Thus was born Melville’s lifelong curiosity with how, where, and why we bury and commemorate our dead. Melville’s Over My Dead Body is a lively (pun intended) and wide-ranging history of cemeteries, places that have mirrored the passing eras in history but have also shaped it.
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excellent read!
- By KJ on 03-05-23
By: Greg Melville
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The White Devil's Daughters
- The Women Who Fought Slavery in San Francisco's Chinatown
- By: Julia Flynn Siler
- Narrated by: Nancy Wu
- Length: 10 hrs and 26 mins
- Unabridged
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During the first hundred years of Chinese immigration - from 1848 to 1943 - San Francisco was home to a shockingly extensive underground slave trade in Asian women, who were exploited as prostitutes and indentured servants. In this gripping, necessary book, best-selling author Julia Flynn Siler shines a light on this little-known chapter in our history - and gives us a vivid portrait of the safe house to which enslaved women escaped.
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Well researched
- By Qats reads on 08-05-19
What listeners say about Sleeping with the Ancestors
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- Danita
- 04-03-24
The ancestors are smiling
This book was very interesting. It’s amazing that someone could come up with this idea. I’m glad he did because it was one of my favorite books. I want to visit slave cabins
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- John Thomas
- 07-19-23
Timely
An exceptional and enlightening and often overlooked as aspect of America’s foundational early history of chattel slavery of African Americans. McGill’s eye opening journey told through his experiences of sleeping in slave dwellings allows the listener to imagine what the lives of these voiceless African Americans must have been in a compelling and emotional way. An important work.
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- Denise Johnson
- 06-06-24
Giving Honor Where Honor is Due
Thank you for elevating the spaces where people with hopes, dreams, tears and fears gave expression to their time on this earth. The accounts of the author's experience and the families of those once enslaved hopefully will inspire the listeners to continue to pursue truth, and justice.
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- Anonymous User
- 12-22-24
great documentation and expression of Black and While American History
accountability and responsibility (rinse and repeat, rinse and repeat, rinse and repeat, rinse and repeat, rinse and repeat)....your history and your story!
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- Kindle Customer
- 12-01-23
Finished in a couple of days
Hearing about places and cities in South Carolina
Surprised that slaves were in 25 states
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- Leenie
- 04-05-24
I loved the extensive research and history taught here!
American history that needs to be taught and understood. So powerful, if we had been taught true and full American history from the beginning we all would have been better for it.
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- M.Johnson
- 07-11-23
Interesting take Ancestral Dwellings
I started it with enthusiasm and had to push to finish. Interesting read for all.
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- Rk
- 09-29-23
Timely and important
I became aware of this book when the PG county libraries hosted a talk by the authors. The book provides useful context for current discussions about race in the US. We all benefit from a more accurate and specific picture of how we got here.
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- Thomas Streveler
- 12-27-23
The truth of storytelling.
At times it hurt to listen. How long and how many stories have to be told before we get it. Racism is in our bones. Admit it and do something to address it.
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- Sheena Fallows
- 10-06-23
Important and incredible work
Thank you, Mr. McGill, for this incredible work. I was so excited to listen to this book after encountering Mr. McGill's Facebook page. This is important work and ground breaking work... especially considering today's climate.
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