Edda Fields-Black will give a keynote speech at Carnegie Mellon University in June in 2024 (provided by Carnegie Mellon University)
Edda Fields-Black was working on a book about rice farming when he came across the story of the attack at Beaufort, which freed more than 700 slaves from Lowcountry Plantations.
A professor at Carnegie Mellon University decided to pursue the story, and for nearly a decade published “Conbys: Harriet Tubman, Raids of the Combahee River, Black Freedom During the Civil War.” Recently won the Pulitzer Prize.
Fields-Black first learned about the June 1863 attack, which read an account by Minus Hamilton, except for Hamilton, who was an 88-year-old slave when a bold mission led by Tubman released him. He sent slaves working on the river and the adjacent plantations running freely before three steamships climbed the river after death at night.
Hamilton also spoke of adoration to see his fellow black man in uniform for the first time, and the image struck Field Black.
“I was like, ‘Amazing’ and I hid it for a long time,” Pittsburgh’s Field Black said.
She tried to read more about the attacks that Hamilton spoke of. However, she did not surpass mentions here and there in the biography of Tubman, best known as the conductor of the Underground Railway.
So she wrote history herself, she spoke about it from the perspective of the participants in the raid, and she said it to detail the importance of rice cultivation in separating it.
“I wanted to bring out all of those elements, so I thought I could tell the story,” Fieldblack said.
“Cone BeadsThe pronunciation of the Combahee River gala won alongside “Native Nations: North American Millennium” and “North American Millennium”, alongside “North American Millennium”, alongside “North American Millennium”, according to Pulitzer’s website.
The 776-page book spoke of the attacks with “rich textures and revelation.”
Harriet Tubman
After fleeing slavery in 1849, Tubman, who became known as Moses of her people, spoke about the raids of the Combahe River in her life.
Her role in the raids made her the first woman to lead a major military operation in the United States and the only black woman to lead the army during the civil war. Her statue Announced at the Tabernacle Baptist Church in Beaufort in May 2024 marks the raid and her role in Beaufort.
However, historians lacked official records and rarely delved into the details, Field Black said.
When she began to talk to friends and colleagues about her plans, they similarly insisted that there was no way to tell the story from the perspective of those enslaved, as there was no record of the attack. But they existed – not the kind most researchers rely on, she said.
“There are broader questions about believing in women, believing in people we have a connection with, and incorporating face-to-value explanations of our words and our own experiences,” Fields-Black said. “That wasn’t done.”
Rice farming was made even more impressive with snakes and crocodiles. Other historians had written about the raids as if the environment were the same as the northern states where Tubman worked, but as a rice field researcher, Field Black knew the specific challenges they presented.
“She could have been on the moon and she would have found a way to survive,” she said.
Find the story
When she began her research in earnest, Fields Black knew she could not rely solely on official military records of attacks written by the Confederate forces that then ruled Beaufort. The 1930s slave stories mention raids at the time of passing, and official records in Beaufort and Colletton counties were burned as the city was burned during the civil war.
Instead, Fields-Black was directed towards an unused historic resource, pension files. After the war, soldiers relayed information about themselves and their experiences in an attempt to receive payments from the government.
Among those submitting applications were members of the Volunteer Infantry from 2nd South Carolina. This is a regiment consisting largely of freed men from the island of sea, who had been sailed up the Combahee River to board and escape.
Scrutinizing hundreds of pension files, Fields-Black came across familiar names.
She knew about Hector Field, where her family got off, but she thought he lived in nearby Colleton County, not Beaufort. However, the Pension File told the story of Fields as a Civil War veteran who fought in volunteer infantry, freed slaves and eventually settled in Colletton County, she said.
Field Black grew up in Florida, but she still has a family in the area. Her own father was born in Green Pond, a small town in the same county, and she said the South Carolina family roots are strong.
The story “is a source of immense pride for our family,” Fields Black said.
Even after they were released, many of the raids returned to Confederate territory and put their lives and freedom in danger to help others, she said. The raid itself came after the Emancipation Proclamation, which declared all slaves in the Southern Province to be free.
However, it was not effective in areas controlled by the Confederate forces. The country’s last slaves were not released until two years later, known on June 19, 1865.
“The actions of these people are more of the actions of those who agree with them than the declaration of liberation at the end of slavery and at the end of slavery, and that I agree with them,” Fields Black said.
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