In this paper, in situ high-resolution electron backscattered diffraction (EBSD) is combined with concurrent atomistic-continuum (CAC) simulations to study the interactions between dislocation-mediated slip and grain boundaries (GBs) in Ni. It is found that the local stress associated with slip-GB intersections first increases upon the pileup of dislocations, then remains high even after the nucleation of dislocations in the neighboring grain, only relaxing after the nucleated dislocations propagate away from the GB due to more incoming dislocations participating in the pileup. The local stress relaxation is accompanied by an atomic-scale GB structure reconfiguration, which affects not only the subsequent dislocation transmission, but also the configuration of those dislocations away from the GB. These findings demonstrate the importance of incorporating local stress history at higher length scale models, such as crystal plasticity finite element.