Dwelling in the past, but not dwelling on it

“It’s a good thing Joe McGill doesn’t believe in ghosts. Some people would say he spends an awful lot of time around them. McGill travels the country sleeping in some of the darkest corners of American history — the places where slaves once lived. On Friday night, he slept in his 56th slave dwelling, at the Ben Lomond Historic Site in Prince William County.

“He has slept in slave huts as far north as Connecticut and all across the South, in dwellings located in urban centers and on rural plantations, in some that are all but crumbling and in some that have been converted into high-end homes.

“‘I think that this project, what it’s doing, is helping African Americans to identify with places,’ said McGill, 52. ‘When I first started this project, I was thinking plantations, especially Southern plantations. I wasn’t thinking urban slavery. I wasn’t thinking Northern slavery. But it’s all part of the story.’”

To read the rest of this article, go to: Dwelling in the past, but not dwelling on it, by Julie Zauzmer for The Washington Post