Living History Comes To Magnolia

Last weekend visitors to Magnolia Plantation and Gardens experienced history with period-dressed “living historians” as they told stories and presented craft and cooking demonstrations to mark a time when enslaved Africans labored in America. The Slave Dwelling Project and Magnolia Plantation and Gardens offered “Inalienable Rights: Living History Through the Eyes of the Enslaved.”
Joseph McGill, founder of the Slave Dwelling Project, and eight storytellers and craftsmen gathered at Magnolia’s former slave dwellings that now serve as the focal point for an award-winning program “From Slavery to Freedom.”
On Friday, May 20, the night before the program, the living history presenters slept in Magnolia’s preserved slave cabins with McGill, a Magnolia history consultant. McGill launched the Slave Dwelling Project at Magnolia six years ago to assist property owners, government agencies and organizations to identify and preserve extant slave dwellings.
Since then McGill has slept in more than 90 former slave dwellings in 17 states. Due to the Slave Dwelling Project’s success, McGill said, “it is time to wake up and deliver the message that the people who lived in these structures were not a footnote in American history.”
The “Inalienable Rights” presentation is funded by the Coastal Community Foundation and the S.C. Humanities Council. Two other programs will be presented at Woodburn House in Pendleton, S.C. on July 15-16, and Hopsewee Plantation in Georgetown County on July 29-30. McGill held the first “Inalienable Rights” program on May 1 at the Lexington County Museum.
For more information about McGill’s Slave Dwelling Project, visit www.slavedwellingproject.org.