2nd Saturday Civil War Series: COMBEE: Harriet Tubman, the Combahee River Raid, and Black Freedom during the Civil War with Dr. Edda L. Fields-Black

Zoom: https://us02web.zoom.us/j/9370579279
Meeting ID: 937 057 9279
**Please note this event will not be streamed via Facebook, and will not be recorded for our YouTube channel**

Harriet Tubman’s legendary life is widely known: escaping enslavement, leading others to freedom via the Underground Railroad, and tirelessly fighting for change. But a crucial chapter often overlooked is her daring Civil War service as a spy for the Union Army, detailed in Dr. Edda Field Black’s groundbreaking book, COMBEE: Harriet Tubman, the Combahee River Raid, and Black Freedom during the Civil War.

A direct descendant of a participant in the raid, Field-Black unveils Tubman’s command of spies and pilots, and intelligence gathered from freedom seekers, which led to a raid that liberated 756 enslaved people from bondage on seven rice plantations as the largest slave rebellion in US history. Through unexamined documents, she brings to life the Combahee River Raid and the untold stories of those freed, their resilience, and the lasting impact of Tubman’s heroism.

Dr. Edda L. Fields-Black teaches history at Carnegie Mellon University and has written extensively about the history of West African rice farmers, including in such works as Deep Roots: Rice Farmers in West Africa and the African Diaspora. She was a co-editor of Rice: Global Networks and New Histories, which was selected as a Choice Outstanding Academic Title. Fields-Black has served as a consultant for the Smithsonian National Museum of African-American History and Culture’s permanent exhibit “Rice Fields of the Lowcountry,” and is the executive producer and librettist of “Unburied, Unmourned, Unmarked: Requiem for Rice,” a widely performed original contemporary classical work by celebrated composer John Wineglass.

Fields-Black is a descendant of Africans enslaved on rice plantations in Colleton County, South Carolina; her great-great-great grandfather fought in the Combahee River Raid in June 1863. Her determination to illuminate the riches of the Gullah dialect, and to reclaim Gullah Geechee history and culture, has taken her to the rice fields of South Carolina and Georgia to those of Sierra Leone and Republic of Guinea in West Africa.