Joseph McGill Jr., a Charleston-based field officer with the National Trust for Historic Preservation, discusses the Slave Dwelling Project, which he started in 2010.
JOSEPH MCGILL JR.
Age: 51
Grew up in: Kingstree
Claim to fame: The Slave Dwelling Project
Day job: Field officer for the National Trust for Historic Preservation
Pet peeve: "Distorted history—history that favors the victor and leaves out the rest of the story."
It began as part of a Civil War documentary for the History Channel. Joseph McGill Jr., a Charleston-based field officer with the National Trust for Historic Preservation, volunteered to spend the night in a restored slave hut at Boone Hall Plantation to demonstrate what living conditions had been like for enslaved Africans.
The overnight stay had a profound impact on McGill, and in 2010 he launched the Slave Dwelling Project, a personal quest to explore and preserve slave quarters across the state and nation.
"My goal is to bring attention to the dwellings," he says. "It’s an opportunity to recognize the places that have been restored and acknowledge the places that need to be restored."
In addition to helping landowners identify, interpret and maintain slave quarters, McGill is raising awareness of the history behind the buildings. Camping overnight in former slave dwellings—sometimes accompanied by the descendants of the slaves who built and occupied them—is a way to establish an emotional connection "to the people who endured despite all that they went through," he says. "You think about those people. You think about the fact that in that space it was probably the most peaceful part of their lives, but even that could be interrupted."
While the project began with an exploration of slave dwellings on Southern plantations, McGill has visited 38 sites in 12 states, including Pennsylvania and Connecticut—areas not normally associated with slavery.
"Expanding the project to those states sheds light on the period of slavery in the United States history," he says. "The North does not get a pass. Slavery existed there also. If you go to any older city that existed prior to the Civil War you can find architecture that supported slaves."