Joseph McGill Jr. coming to Natchez for two-day program on slave dwellings

Joseph McGill Jr.

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.

For more information, contact Carter Burns at Historic Natchez Foundation: Call 601-442-2500 or send email to [email protected]. Information about
the Slave Dwelling Project can be found at https://slavedwellingproject.org/