#slavequarters

Joseph McGill Jr., founder and director of the Slave Dwelling Project

NATCHEZ, Miss. -- Joseph McGill Jr., a renowned authority on slave dwellings, is coming to Natchez for a two-day program that will feature a lecture and a living history campfire conversation.

The lecture, which is titled, “The Education Value of Sleeping in Slave Dwellings: Mississippi Edition,” will be presented at 6 p.m. Friday, April 14 at Historic Natchez Foundation. The campfire conversation will be held at 6 p.m., April 15 at the Auburn slave quarters.

Both events are free and open to the public. They are part of McGill’s nationally acclaimed Slave Dwelling Project. The two-day program is being hosted by Historic Natchez Foundation, Natchez National Historical Park, and Our Restoration Nation.

McGill is a history consultant for Magnolia Plantation in Charleston, S.C., and the founder and director of the Slave Dwelling Project. Through the Slave Dwelling Project, he has arranged for people to “sleep in extant slave dwellings,” providing experiences that “brought much needed attention to these often-neglected structures that are vitally important to the American built environment,” McGill said in a biographical sketch.

Since 2018, McGill has conducted more than 250 overnights in about 100 different sites in 19 states and the District of Columbia.

As a field officer for the National Trust for Historic Preservation, McGill worked to revitalize the Sweet Auburn commercial district in Atlanta, Ga., and to develop a management plan for the Mississippi Delta National Heritage Area.

McGill is a former executive director of the African American Museum in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, and a former director of history and culture at Penn Center, St. Helena Island, South Carolina. He has also served as a National Park Service park ranger at Fort Sumter National Monument in Charleston.

McGill holds a Bachelor of Arts degree in Professional English from South Carolina State University, Orangeburg, S.C. He is a veteran of the U.S. Air Force.

McGill’s work is recognized by authors and historians. He is featured in the books “Confederates in the Attic” by Tony Horwitz and “Behind the Big House” by Jodi Skipper.

Historic Natchez Foundation is located at 108 S. Commerce St. and Auburn is at 400 Duncan Avenue, both in Natchez. Parking is in the rear of Auburn, which is accessed from the second road on the right inside the Duncan Park Gate.