A free panel at the Concord Museum on Saturday brings together a historian who sleeps in former slave dwellings, an artist who paints portraits of enslaved people with dignity, and a scholar who led a $1.4 million restoration of one of New England's last surviving slave quarters — all to ask one question: as the nation marks 250 years since the Revolution, whose liberty was actually won in 1776?

The historian who sleeps where history happened.

Joe McGill Jr., a South Carolina historian and founder of the Slave Dwelling Project, has spent more than 250 nights sleeping in the cabins, attics and basements where enslaved people once lived, across 25 states — a practice he calls "sleeping with the ancestors." The experience has reshaped his own understanding of the country's history. "I'm learning that slavery was not just a southern thing, as I was led to believe. Wherever colonies were, slavery existed," McGill said in an earlier interview.

An artist reimagining images meant to dehumanize.

Artist Jennifer Davis Carey will display pieces from her "Redemption" series, vitreous enamel portraits that reimagine mid-19th-century daguerreotypes of enslaved African Americans originally commissioned by Harvard professor Louis Agassiz for pseudoscientific racial research. The Boston Globe called the work "tender yet unflinching" — a direct answer to images once made to strip away humanity.

A scholar who helped save a piece of this history from disappearing.

Lauren McCormack, now executive director of Freedom's Way National Heritage Area, previously led the Marblehead Museum, where she oversaw the $1.4 million restoration of the Jeremiah Lee Brick Kitchen and Slave Quarters. Freedom's Way spans 45 communities across north-central Massachusetts and southern New Hampshire, including Minute Man National Historical Park in Concord and Lexington. Scarlett Hoey of the Wayland Museum & Historical Society moderates the conversation.

Part of a bigger series asking hard questions about the Revolution.

"Liberty for Whom? Untold Stories of Revolutionary Massachusetts" runs from 1:30 to 3 p.m. at the Concord Museum, part of its Massachusetts 250 forum series that has previously featured historians Jill Lepore, David Blight and Doris Kearns Goodwin.

How to attend.

The event is free, with registration. Museum galleries will be open to attendees before and after the panel, hosted in partnership with the Wayland Museum & Historical Society and supported by a grant from the Massachusetts Office of Travel & Tourism.