History's his thing

By Charles Sowell  

NOVEMBER 14, 2010 2:12 p.m. (0)

Slaves were marginalized in life and shortchanged by history, but their memory lives on in the dwellings they occupied.

“Lots of places spend inordinate amounts of money on preserving the big house on plantations,” said Joseph McGill, a program officer with the National Trust for Historic Preservation office in Charleston. “But it was the slaves who drove the economic engine of the plantation system and at many sites the places where slaves lived are rapidly vanishing.”

Southerners have a love affair with the idea of plantations; moonlight and magnolias is an easy sell for tourists visiting one of the many plantation homes converted into bed and breakfast inns across the South.

Few tourists would be willing to spend a night in a ramshackle slave cabin, but McGill does just that, on his own dime, taking only the bare essentials – a sleeping bag and a few items to get him through the long dark night, like a stick.

“It is a club, actually,” McGill said. “I take it to deal with any critters who might want to come to visit. I know that if I can get to that club everything’s gonna be alright.”

McGill will appear at the Chapman Cultural Center in Spartanburg from 12:30 p.m. until 1:30 p.m. for Lunch & Learn on Friday, Nov. 19.

“It is surprising to some to find out that slaves weren’t just confined to servitude in the fields and plantation houses,” he said. “There were lots of slaves living in the towns and cities, too.

“Often a building out behind a nice (time appropriate) city dwelling was once home to slaves. That’s why I don’t call them cabins; some of them are anything but.”

These urban slave dwellings have generally evolved though the years into something quite different than their original purpose.

“It’s sort of like an old carriage house becoming a garage, or an apartment,” he said. “You have to really look in order to find the evidence, but the core slave dwelling is there.”

McGill recently spent the night in a slave dwelling on Morris Street in Anderson, an example of the urban slave quarters.

Some of these urban quarters had people living in them through the 1990s, McGill said.     “Often the people who lived there had no idea they were sharing space once occupied by slaves.”

When occupants move out, the dwelling often falls into disrepair and simply crumbles out of existence over time.

McGill has been sleeping in old slave dwellings for years now with an eye toward educating property owners about the often-ignored heritage right beneath their nose.

McGill appears in Tony Horwitz’s book “Confederates in the Attic” by virtue of a chance encounter he had with the author while working as an interpretive ranger at the Fort Sumter National Historic Site.

He has also appeared in a History Channel documentary about Civil War re-enactors that aired in 2001. He was filmed at a battle re-enactment in Florida and after spending the night in one of the slave dwellings at Boone Hall Plantation near Mount Pleasant.

Part of his duties with the National Trust for Historic Preservation is to work with property owners in Alabama, Louisiana and South Carolina to preserve buildings of historic significance.

He is the founder of Company “I” 54th Massachusetts Reenactment Regiment in Charleston. McGill also serves in various capacities for African American heritage groups around the state.