Holly Jackson - One of the greatest beauties of a book, in my opinion, is that there's no passport needed to take you to places you want to go or maybe never even knew existed.

Hi, I'm Holly Jackson, host of Books by the River.

And I'm here to navigate the conversation of those who draw the maps for some of the most interesting journeys that are bound in a book.

Announcer- Major funding for Books by the River is brought to you by the ETV endowment of South Carolina.

For more than 40 years, the ETV endowment of South Carolina has been a partner of South Carolina ETV and South Carolina public radio.

This program is supported by South Carolina Humanities, a not-for-profit organization, inspiring, engaging, and enriching South Carolinians with programs on literature, history, culture, and heritage.

SC Humanities receives funding from the national endowment for the humanities.

Democracy demands wisdom.

Additional funding for books by the river is provided by Visit Beaufort, Port Royal and Sea Islands, and Osher Lifelong Learning Institute at USC Beaufort.

Holly Jackson - And today, we are here with two authors on set, really excited about this one.

We have Mr. Herb Frazier and Mr. Joe McGill, who uh travel here to Beaufort, South Carolina just down the road from Charleston.

So thank you so much for joining us.

Joseph McGill - You are welcome.

Herb Frazier - Thank you for having us.

Holly Jackson - We are talking about their book Sleeping with the Ancestors How I Followed the Footprints of Slavery.

Certainly a tough topic, but one that we need to hear and we need to read and we're going to get to that point in just a minute.

But first, if you would just kind of tell us a little bit about yourselves, your roles and how this kind of all brings you together and to this title.

Mr. Frazier?

Herb Fazier - Well, I first met Joe in 1992 when I was a journalist reporter at the post and Courier in Charleston, and at that time, I was president of an organization called the South Carolina Coastal Association of Black Journalists, and I think it was the '97 conference, and we had journalists coming from the south, black journalists coming to Charleston from the south, and we wanted to share with them a little bit of Gullah culture, but we also wanted to share with them some African American history, and at that time, Joe was very active as a Civil War uh, reenactor.

So I contacted Joe and he did a presentation at Fort Sumter at night around a campfire, and he was portraying a black civil war soldier who had volunteered to fight down in Charleston and South Carolina, and that just really took us back to that period of time.

It was such a dramatic portrayal.

and fast forward to 2010.

So I left daily journalism and was working at, as a PR director at Magnolia Plantation and Gardens.

and Joe was hired by Magnolia to oversee and evaluate the renovations of some 1850 era slave dwellings at Magnolia.

And he made the comment that when the work is over, I'd like to sleep in one of these buildings.

And that is how the slave dwelling project grew.

Holly Jackson -All right, so, Joe, tell us us a little bit about yourself and just kind of where that idea began and how far before it began, did you utter those words to him and than it kind of take off?

Joseph McGill - Well, it kind of began in high school, because that's where I was educated about slavery.

or was not.

uh, as I later found out.

Because what I learned, I had to unlearn about that institution.

When we were inspecting those cabins, when I uttered, I would like to sleep in one of these cabins, it was because that lack of education, because as I visited plantations, they weren't talking about the elements of the book.

and that was my inspiration to come up with the idea to sleep in slave cabins.

Holly Jackson - Was it what you thought it would be?

Joseph McGill - No, it was not what I thought it would be.

I thought it would be a one year experience.

That was the intent when I started in 2010.

Because all I wanted to do was go to where my limited resources would take me in the state of South Carolina, and I wanted to go to plantations where slavery existed and bring attention to them by simply sleeping in these buildings.

And with Herb's assistant, all those adventures going around the country sleeping in slave dwellings is now this book.

Holly Jackson - There has to be such a myriad of emotions that you would experience through one night somewhere.

Joseph McGill - The very first night, Magnolia Plantation and Gardens are trying to get to sleep, uh, despite the wind blowing and the limbs of a tree interacting with the roof of the building, thinking about people of that era.

Enslaved dwellings, mothers giving birth to children who, biologically those children were theirs, but the laws of that period said they weren't, they were chattel.

Not only was the mother enslaved, but her children and her children's children would be enslaved.

Thinking about dogs, chasing escapees, Thinking about the enslaved people working and not being able to benefit from that work, they're working for the benefit of their enslavers.

So it was those things, those kinds of thoughts when I would be in these places alone.

Today, we'd still do the sleepovers, but I don't do them alone anymore.

Holly Jackson - Why not?

Joseph McGill - Because they are folks clamoring for the opportunity to do so, to join me.

Now, initially, it was a little challenge to get volunteers to hang out with them because that was they thought I was a little crazy.

Some people still do think I'm a little crazy.

But now this thing has been going for 14 years.

It's the conversations before the sleepovers.

That's most challenging because in these conversations before the sleepover, we talk about things that people don't usually talk about with folks who don't look and think like them.

We talk about white supremacy, white privilege, Confederate monuments, uh, weddings on plantations, which is a big deal for some.

So all that is crept into the conversations that we now have around the campfires.

Holly Jackson - Whenever you have multiple people and it sounds like you have people from all backgrounds, does the group come together or are they pretty split?

I mean, is there is there tension in the room?

Joseph McGill - Yeah.

We expect tension to be in the room because of the subject matters.

There have been some times where it almost got physical, as in coming to blows.

Like the time at Monticello talking to the descendants of Sally Hemings and some of them in that group of descendants thinking that that relationship between Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings was consensual.

And then they're the rest of the group.

That's the time I had to physically get in between the two gentlemen who were about to come to blows over that subject matter.

So it is it's quite tense.

However, generally these environments, these settings tends to disarm.

It tends to allow people the opportunity to talk about these subject matters they don't usually talk about.

Holly Jackson - Mr. Frazier, you've written a a lot in your career.

How does this stand out?

I imagine it does in many ways.

Herb Frazier - What stands out in the sense that, um there were a couple of opportunities that Joe could have done this book with the University of Virginia Press and the University of Georgia Press that, those collaborations didn't pan out, and I've done a few of the cabin stays with him not nearly as many as he's done in the last 14 years, he's done 150 different sites, 250 nights, because some of these places he went to more than once.

Because as a journalist, I've traveled to West Africa and the Caribbean, and written about the Gullah, the connection between the Caribbean and and South Carolina.

So I had those, that knowledge and that travel experiences that I could bring to this project, so that's sort of what I what helped.

And the fact that I've written before.

Joe, in the beginning, he had written blogs, so we took those blogs and we started adding to those blogs the other blogs that people, other people who had experienced this with them.

They wrote blogs to so we added to that.

And then we added the history of the sites and then we added the interactions he's had with people who were the descendants of enslavers and the people who are the descendants of people who had been enslaved.

But most importantly, we brought to this narrative the voices of the enslaved, because when they were alive, their voices were muted.

Holly Jackson - It sounds like so many components.

First of all, you've already have two people involved in the process, and then you have all these components and ideally, you want those formerly muted voices to be heard.

How did you stay organized through it all to make sure that you're staying on track with that?

Herb Frazier - Great question.

We met every week.

Throughout the week we would do individually, we would do research.

I would write, he would write, we'd blend what we'd written.

Joe is such a storyteller.

He's a great storyteller.

I ask him a question and I get more back from him than I anticipated.

But throughout this process, I kept asking him one question.

I said, Joe, how has this changed you?

Because Joe, the Joe McGill 14 years ago, was a much more timid Joe McGill than the Joe McGill now.

So we could look at not only his journey around the country, 25 states and the District of Columbia, but also how that journey has changed him and his interaction with the people he met along that path in addition to that, the voices of the enslaved are brought forth.

Holly Jackson - Physically being in these cabins, I guess you just feel almost like, um it's really the closest you can get, right?

to be kind of becoming part of the story in this day and age.

So what are some things that we read about in this book that that just bother you and tug at you and you maybe can't get past.

Joseph McGill - When we look at the roles of the mothers of that period, enslave women in all that they endured and the fact that the males of that period enslaved males could not come to their defense, if they did, you know, their gene pools could be eliminated.

So for me to exist despite all that, we are their hope.

We are their joy.

We are the reason they acquiesce that they persevered.

I usually come into contact with youth, mainly young men who would make a statement such as, well, I wouldn't have done that.

They could not have gotten me to have done those things that enslaved people did.

And I said, you know, you might be right.

But if your ancestors thought the way that you did, then you probably wouldn't be here.

Now, I'm not saying that there weren't those who were demure and and taken it all, because there were the Nat Turners.

There were the Denmark Vesey's and such folks.

I probably would have been one of those historically based on what I'm doing here today, but I think I would much rather have been a Frederick Douglas.

Because Frederick Douglas, in his time and space, had the opportunity to be more in tune with what John Brown did.

In fact, he made the decision that you do it your way.

I'll do it mine.

But those are the things that, you know, I can think about in this date and time if I look at these things historically.

Holly Jackson - Tell me who if you had your wish, who do you want to read this book?

Joseph McGill - The publishing company has a plan, and Herb can talk about that plan.

Herb Frazier - I think I know where he's going with that is, I think we want the young people to read this book, because, as Joe mentioned, Hasht book group in New York, is gonna come out with a paperback version of this book in January.

That's great in and of itself.

But what is even better is that the book is going to have a teacher's guide and a couple scholars have written the guide and have drawn from the book some very thoughtful questions philosophically, emotionally, you know, so this is gonna really bring them into the narrative and get them to think critically about this history.

And in our travels around the country, particularly in southern states, we find that students are very interested in this part of American history, so it is the adults who are afraid of that part of our history that is not that pretty, but needs to be understood, taught, uh, so that we don't repeat, you know, the past.

Holly Jackson - Sure.

Whenever you have been on this journey after the book's been published and you're talking to different groups, I'd like to know your reaction.

does it give you hope or does it make you sad?

Tell me kind of what the overall feeling has been.

Joseph McGill - There's hope.

There's hope because we get to interact with uh varying demographics.

With that, it's what Herb alluded to uh with all the politics of this history.

Um, and the fact that, you know, there is this saying by politicians that they don't want this subject matter taught to our youth because it's gonna make them hate themselves and hate America.

we don't get that from the youth.

To address that wealth gap, we got to know the origins of it.

uh, you know, to address the racism, we have to know the origins of it.

We have to know that it's baked into the system.

When we look at the declaration of independence, and, you know, all men are created equal, but, you know, three/5s is a fraction.

Holly Jackson - Tell me what was your greatest challenge writing the book?

Herb Frazier - It wasn't so much of a challenge, but we had a little brief pause between the two of us when we came across information that reveals that, you know, people of African descent enslaved other people of African descent in that period of time.

And it is just for a flicker, we said, do we want to go go there?

Of course, we need to go there.

If we want to be truthful with the full breath of this narrative, we have to tell everything.

our writing this was was fairly I wouldn't say it was easy, but it was fun.

It was surprising because I learned in any project you learned things that you didn't know before.

I learned a lot of things I didn't know before, one of which was the origins of the black family reunion.

the black family reunion that many black black families in this country participated in and probably don't know why we do what we do, and I'm sure you know.

Holly Jackson - I'd love to hear you tell it.

Herb Frazier - After the Civil War, those families who were able to emancipate themselves and went to free states, they looked back down south to re-knit those um those kinship ties that were broken because of the Civil War and uh slavery.

It is sort of like black folks in Gullah culture who don't really understand why black folks go to church on New Year's Eve at midnight.

It is because on the eve of the Emancipation Proclamation, black folks went into churches, went into church to anticipate the coming, the new dawn of freedom the next day.

As a kid growing up in Charleston, my grandmother used to take me to watch night service at Emanuel Ame Church on Calhoun Street, but nobody told us why we did that.

That is the reason why.

Holly Jackson - Thank you for sharing that.

I certainly didn't know that either.

Mr. McGill, was there anything that really you of course, I'm sure there was something, but what stands out to what you learned throughout this journey?

Joseph McGill - Well, the challenge for me was, uh realizing that I'm not a writer.

This gentleman is.

I'm kind of a matter of fact, you know, I did the blogs.

I wrote the blogs, but dialing back my ego, knowing that, yeah, it's your idea, but you gotta let go.

You gotta trust people with that idea before you can come up with a a a book such as what what what we came up with.

Another the biggest challenge, a bigger challenge, I should say, was there's an audio version of the book.

Reading into a microphone for the consumption of others, that was a challenge.

Holly Jackson - How wonderful, though, that, you know, that will cater to a whole different audience, and it just gets the book and figuratively in the hands of so many more people.

Tell me about the editing process, and was there a time whenever there was a disagreement of what goes, what stays, and did you have to stand up for yourself at any time to say, no, we're gonna we're gonna have this in here.

Joseph McGill - Well, he, I mean, he spoke about the fact that we came about the information oh, well, we already knew, but we came we had to put it in writing uh about, you know, black slave owners.

We had to put it there to be honest uh, you know, to the subject.

You know, the N-word in the book.

It it's there.

It's it's written.

-That was one of the things back Holly Jackson - Was there a lot of back and forth about how that would be?

Herb Frazier - Yeah, do we use that word?

Well, that's the way folks talked back in the 19th century, and we wanted to be true and honest to the time period, and that's just the way folks talk, you know, so we, and even people of African descent used it in referring to not only themselves, but other people.

So, I mean, you know, so we we didn't want to skew history in any way.

Holly Jackson - Have you had some readers that are uncomfortable with that?

Joseph McGill - We haven't come across any, um, you know, complaining about that.

Now, we have confessions out there, about people reading the book and getting upset, as in mad, as in, you know, they're reading what I experienced and and in some cases, they're reading what our ancestors experienced kind of for the first time.

So we've had those kinds of testimonials.

Holly Jackson - Isn't that kind of what you want, right?

I mean, that that proves you're taking them there.

Joseph McGill - It keeps your attention as long as you can temper your anger.

Some folks have to read a few chapters, put it down, deal with that, then come back to it.

Holly Jackson - Right.

So you had this um you said really since high school of about this kind of a desire to sleep in the cabins.

So now that you've you've done the journey, the book is written, is published, you're going out there, how do you feel?

Joseph Jackson - I feel great.

I feel great because there are still people calling on the both of us.

We had a experience, recent experience in Grand Rapids, Michigan.

Where we were uh there's a group called Garden Comm.

They concentrate on gardens.

But what they pulled out of there, what they wanted us to pull out of the book was, well, how do, how does what you do relate to what we do?

Well, it relates in the sense that those historical gardens that you guys are so enamored by your garden clubs, some of that history is rooted in our enslaved ancestors creating those gardens.

You know, there are a lot of places in these United States.

Natches, Mississippi, great example.

Charleston, South Carolina, great example.

They have these garden tours, but the real history of these garden tours is the fact that enslaved people created all that.

So if you're telling that element of the story, then I'm good with it.

But if you're out there just admiring the plants and for what it is today without talking about the history of it then I've got a problem with that.

So that's how we, you know, we made that relation, uh, in that, at that time in Grand Rapids, Michigan.

We tried to connect dots, and this book does that.

Holly Jackson - Tell me about the journey personally within yourself, Mr. Frazier, with of course, you you've got a job to do, but this probably struck some chords with you emotionally, so.

Herb Frazier - That's an interesting question.

As a journalist, I guess I don't have any emotions.

I've been to places where my ancestors in West Africa have been sold and placed on slave ships.

and I've seen other people around me react emotionally, and I've never reacted emotionally, whether I'm in the Gambia or Sierra, Serria Leone or and and Gana.

And I questioned myself about that, do I why don't I have some emotional response?

Yes, it is this a do I have a heart, there's a heart beating there?

Um, but I guess in in the sense that one of the things that we wanted to do in the book that we didn't do because we A, didn't have the time, to do the research, uh and one things that I hadn't done is to connect myself with an an enslaved ancestor.

But I have been connected with a region of West Africa where our enslaved ancestors came from, Mende people in Sierra Leone.

Holly Jackson - Okay.

Well, uh I do think, by the way, it's a gift that you're able to do that separation, because you're probably able to really focus on doing your best work that way.

How about you?

Do you have that within you, or do you have to kind of pause for a minute and take a breath?

Joseph McGill - A lot of folks are a little disappointed in me because they want me to tell stories about my communing with the ancestors.

That's not my intent.

My intent is to bring attention to existing buildings, all places these buildings once were, because we know that these buildings can tell a story.

I'm not trying to commune with the ancestors, because although my intentions are good, and I'm sure their intentions toward me would be good, if indeed that's a thing that can be done, but that's a heavy burden to take that on.

I mean, some folks are a lot more spiritual than I am.

I deal with the physical.

I deal with what I can control.

I know that I'm going to have to be communicating with land owners for the opportunity to come to their site and do what I do.

Now, I'm a lot more vocal in defense of our enslaved ancestors.

That's a part of my growth, in doing this uh a slave dwelling project.

But the thing is, 14 years ago when I started this thing, it was me calling these folks and pleading my case.

Now it's the total opposite.

They're now calling me.

Holly Jackson - I wanna thank you so much for coming here.

This has just been a real fascinating and special conversation.

So, I thank you for coming here and you two have done something really neat and you've also done something special here because for the first time in this season, I've completely ignored the clock.

It's been the zero for a while now, so the editor's not gonna like me, but uh I just couldn't stop the conversation, so thank you all so much.

Joseph McGill - Now you said the first time this year you did this?

That's true, yes.

-I was wondering why you gonna pack this in 20 minutes.

Holly Jackson - I know.

All right, but thank you so much, and and thank you all here at home for making us part of your day and watching us on here on Books by the River.

I'm your host, Holly Jackson, and we hope to see you right back here next time on Books by the River.

Herb Frazier - At midnight, the group sang happy birthday to Deborah before settling in for the night.

The living historians joined me in one of two replicas of the original slave dwellings.

The family slept in the plantation's hospital.

Charles and Wilson, Charles and Leslie Wilson prepared their beddings in the operating room.

Mina and her sisters Deborah and Margaret slept in the sick room with a family friend, Hazel Reed of New York City.

As they labored to inflate air mattresses, they chastised themselves for complaining about lowering their middle aged bodies to the floor.

The ancestors had it even harder, harder than they could ever imagine.

Falling asleep was easy staying asleep was a challenge.

Throughout the night, Miner, her sisters and Hazel rose to scurry across an open field to a distant outhouse.

On the third trip, the sisters complained the facility was not near by, but then they spontaneously burst into a collective laugh when they realized the inconvenience was just for one night and not a lifetime.

Quote: Sallie and Koy we ain't" Mina said.

that realization solidified another poignant moment of appreciation for what the ancestors endured when they had to pull up their skirt tails to tromp across wet grass in the dark to answer nature's call.

After sunrise, they stood in a circle to pray to the ancestors.

Between each invocation they poured a libation.

Charles Wilson gave the final prayer, and an appreciation for the ancestors who endured with a sense of purpose, with tears streaming down his cheeks, he expressed gratitude for them.

The ancestors could suffer two deaths.

The first came when they died.

The second could occur if their descendants forgot them.

Announcer - Major funding for Books by the River is brought to you by the ETV endowment of South Carolina.

For more than 40 years, the ETV endowment of South Carolina has been a partner of South Carolina ETV and South Carolina public radio.

This program is supported by South Carolina Humanities, a not-for-profit organization, inspiring, engaging, and enriching South Carolinians with programs on literature, history, culture, and heritage.

SC Humanities receives funding from the national endowment for the humanities.

Democracy demands wisdom.

Additional funding for books by the river is provided by Visit Beaufort, Port Royal and Sea Islands, and Osher Lifelong Learning Institute at USC Beaufort.