Author Spotlight Series
Brick by Brick
Constructing America's Identities
Gayle Jessup White
American history is in Gayle Jessup White's blood. A direct descendant of both Thomas Jefferson and those enslaved at his famous Monticello estate, her story is a real-life version of Roots — a 40-year struggle to prove her family's belief of their links to the author of the Declaration of Independence was true. Along the way, she unearthed not only a fascinating family saga but also sharp and searing insights into America's conflicted past and the unsettled future.
She recounts her journey in her recently released book, “Reclamation: Sally Hemings, Thomas Jefferson and a Descendant's Search for Her Family's Lasting Legacy” — hailed by bestselling author Bakari Sellers as “a quintessential American story that should be required reading for anyone who doesn't understand the true contributions of African Americans to this nation.”
The narrative begins in Washington, D.C., where White grew up in a comfortable Black middleclass neighborhood, shielded from racial issues, and continues through her career as an award-winning television reporter and communications specialist. Throughout it all, she was dogged by something she overheard during a family conversation when she was 13 years old — that her family could trace its roots to Jefferson. But the family lore was oral history passed down from an elderly relative who could not read or write. For decades, validating that seemed impossible without historical documents and other evidence.
It was not until White made connections at Monticello that, with the help of a famous historian and DNA, she could prove that the family legend was not only true but also more inspiring than she had ever hoped.
Today, Gayle Jessup White works at Monticello as the Thomas Jefferson Foundation's first public relations and community engagement officer — the first descendant of Jefferson and the families he enslaved to work for the Foundation. Her position provides her unique opportunities to share her American story — and her hope that lessons learned from our past can guide us in the future — in evocative presentations and a forthcoming book about her mother's side of the family.
F. Evan Nooe
F. Evan Nooe graduated from the University of Florida with a bachelor’s in history in 2006 and received his master’s in history from Clemson University in 2008. He received his Ph.D. in history from the University of Mississippi in 2012 before going back to the University of Florida to receive a bachelor’s in psychology in 2016.
He is the assistant professor of history and historian for the Native American Studies Center at the University of South Carolina, Lancaster. Nooe’s research and teaching focus on the history of the American South, Native American history, foodways and tourism.
Nooe has previously been a temporary assistant professor at Austin Peay State University, parttime instructor of history at Central Piedmont Community College and part-time instructor of American studies at UNC Charlotte.
His work has appeared in several academic journals such as Ethnohistory, The Southern Quarterly, Native South and The Journal of Tourism History. In addition, Nooe serves on editorial boards for H-AmIndian, The Journal of Florida Studies and the recently launched Journal of Disney Studies.
F. Evan Nooe’s first book, “Aggression and Sufferings: Settler Violence, Native Resistance, and the Coalescence of the Old South,” examines how the violent dispossession of the Indigenous South remade the region and white Southerners. The publication was awarded the Anne B. and James B. McMillan Prize in Southern History from the University of Alabama Press.
Joseph McGill Jr.
Joseph McGill Jr., a native of Kingstree, South Carolina, is the founder of the Slave Dwelling Project and a history consultant for Magnolia Plantation in Charleston, South Carolina. By arranging for people to sleep in extant slave dwellings, the Slave Dwelling Project has brought much-needed attention to these often-neglected structures that are vitally important to the American built environment.
McGill has conducted over 250 overnights in approximately 150 different sites in 25 states and the District of Columbia. He has interacted with the descendants of both the enslaved communities and the enslavers associated with antebellum historic sites. He speaks with schoolchildren and college students, historical societies, community groups, and members of the public.
Upon graduation from high school, McGill enlisted in the United States Air Force. While in the Air Force, McGill served as a security policeman in Washington State, England and Germany. He has gone on to serve in multiple roles, teaching, preserving and interpreting history.
McGill is the former director of history and culture at Penn Center on St. Helena Island, South Carolina; Penn School was the first school built during the Civil War for the education of recently freed slaves. As director, he was responsible for collecting, preserving and making public the history of Penn Center and the Sea Island African American history and culture.
He also served as executive director of the African American Museum located in Cedar Rapids, Iowa. His responsibilities included seeking funds from grant-making entities to support the capital and operating budget of the museum and developing programs that interpret the history of African Americans.
McGill was a field officer for the National Trust for Historic Preservation, working to revitalize the Sweet Auburn commercial district in Atlanta, Georgia, and to develop a management plan for the Mississippi Delta National Heritage Area. He has also served as a park ranger at Fort Sumter National Monument in Charleston, South Carolina, where he gave oral presentations on Fort Sumter and Fort Moultrie. He supervised volunteers and participated in living history presentations.
Joseph McGill Jr. appears in the book “Confederates in the Attic” by Tony Horwitz and is co-author of “Sleeping with the Ancestors: How I Followed the Footprints of Slavery.”
Herb Frazier
Herb Frazier, Charleston, South Carolina-based writer, is the senior projects editor for the Charleston City Paper and the former marketing director at Magnolia Plantation and Gardens. Before he joined Magnolia, Frazier edited and reported for five daily newspapers in the south, including his hometown paper, The Post and Courier.
Frazier has been named Journalist of the Year by the South Carolina Press Association, taught news writing as a visiting lecturer at Rhodes University in South Africa and is a former Michigan Journalism Fellow at the University of Michigan.
He has led journalism workshops in West Africa, East Africa and South America for the U.S. government and a Washington, D.C.-based journalism foundation.
His international reporting includes West Germany during the fall of the Berlin Wall, humanitarian relief efforts in Bosnia and Rwanda during their post-genocide, social and political issues in Japan and South Korea, and Cuba’s cultural ties with Florida and Lowcountry South Carolina.
He has also reported on the military conflict in Sierra Leone and the historical and cultural ties that bind West Africa and the Gullah Geechee people of coastal South Carolina and Georgia.
Frazier is a former member of the Gullah Geechee Cultural Heritage Corridor Commission, established by Congress in 2006, and has also served as secretary of the Jazz Artists of Charleston, which supports the Charleston Jazz Orchestra.
He has also published four books. He is the author of “Behind God’s Back: Gullah Memories,” co-author of “We Are Charleston: Tragedy and Triumph at Mother Emanuel” with Marjory Wentworth and Dr. Bernard Powers Jr., and co-editor of “Ukweli: (pronounced you—quail— lee) Searching for Healing Truth, South Carolina Writers and Poets Explore American Realism” with the late Horace Mungin.
Herb Frazier’s most recent book, “Sleeping with the Ancestors: How I Followed the Footprint of Slavery,” was co-written with Joseph McGill Jr., founder of the Slave Dwelling Project. His forthcoming book, “Crossing the Sea on a Sacred Song,” is the story of an African funeral song that links a Georgia family with a woman in Sierra Leone.
Richard Porcher
Richard Porcher is a native of Pinopolis in Berkeley County, South Carolina, and presently lives in Mount Pleasant. He graduated from Berkeley High School in 1957 and the College of Charleston with a B.S. in biology in 1962. He received his Ph.D. from the University of South Carolina in 1974, where he studied field botany under the noted field botanist Dr. Wade T. Batson.
Porcher began a 33-year tenure as a biology professor at The Citadel in 1970 and is presently Professor Emeritus, having retired in 2003. He is the past adjunct full professor in the Department of Biological Sciences at Clemson University, where he established the Wade T. Batson Endowment in Field Botany to assist students in the study of the state’s flora and plant ecology.
He is also a past trustee of the South Carolina Nature Conservancy, Charleston Library Society and the Waring Historical Library, and past secretary of the Board of Directors of the Huguenot Church in Charleston. Porcher is the recipient of the 1830 Award (2006) by the Charleston Horticultural Society, South Carolina Environmental Awareness Award (2008), The Citadel School of Science and Math Faculty Award (2015), Order of the Palmetto (2019) and the Tom Dodd Jr. Award of Excellence (2023) by the Cullowhee Native Plant Conference.
In 1995, he published “Wildflowers of the Carolina Lowcountry and Lower Pee Dee” and is the senior author of “Wildflowers of South Carolina” with Doug Rayner, published in 2001.
In 2005, He published “The Story of Sea Island Cotton” with Sarah Fick, and in 2014, he published “The Market Preparation of Carolina Rice” with William Judd.
In 2022, Porcher, along with Pat McMillan, Doug Rayner and David White, published a revised and expanded edition of “A Guide to the Wildflowers of South Carolina.” He also published “Our Lost Heritage: A History of the Peoples in the St. John’s Basin in Berkeley, S.C.,” with Cecile Guerry and Robert Hauck.
Richard Porcher is currently in the process of photographing the wildflowers and plants of South Carolina, with 1600 different species already in file. The photographs have been placed in the public domain. He has also recently assembled a team of historians and archeologists to conduct a “Cultural History of the Santee Delta.”
George McDaniel
George McDaniel is the executive director emeritus of Drayton Hall, a historic site owned by the National Trust for Historic Preservation and operated by the Drayton Hall Preservation Trust in Charleston, South Carolina, where he served for more than 25 years.
He is the current president of McDaniel Consulting LLC, a strategy firm that helps organizations and museums build bridges between themselves and their broader communities.
A native of Atlanta, Georgia, and a former Peace Corps Volunteer in Togo, West Africa, he is a graduate of The Lovett School and holds a B.A. in history from Sewanee (The University of the South), a MAT in history from Brown University and a Ph.D. in history from Duke University.
Beginning with the Smithsonian Institution, he has built a career in education and history museums. From 1985 to 1989, he worked with the Atlanta History Center as director of education and public programs. A nationally respected museum professional and author, he helps organizations to use history, place and culture to enhance community.
He has presented at numerous workshops and conferences on museums, history, education and historic preservation, and his work has earned awards at the local, state and national levels.
A sample of some of his awards include the SC Preservation Honor Award from the Office of the Governor (2023), Alexander S. Salley Professional Service Award from the Confederation of South Carolina Local Historical Societies (2023), Governor’s Award, Historic Preservation, from the SC Department of Archives and History (2016) and the Meritorious Service Award from the SC National Heritage Corridor (2010).
George McDaniel’s recent book, “Drayton Hall Stories: A Place and Its People,” is the first book in the nation to focus on the 18-century site’s recent history using interviews with descendants (both Black and White), board members, staff, donors, architects, historians, preservationists, tourism leaders and more. Each interview combines with others to create an engaging picture, revealing never-before-shared family moments, major decisions in preservation and site stewardship, and pioneering efforts to transform a Southern plantation into a site for racial conciliation.
