(Holly) A book in our reach is like a handshake to the connection we all need, because through them we gain friends, family and those characters we never even knew we needed in our lives until we start turning the pages.

Hi, I'm Holly Jackson, your host of Books by the River.

Thanks for joining us on this journey, where we sit beside the writers who tell these stories that sometimes feel like our own, or give us a glimpse of the experiences of someone we need to know.

♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ (Announcer) Major funding for Books by the River is brought to you by the ETV Endowment of South Carolina, the proud partner of South Carolina ETV and Public Radio.

With the generosity of individuals, corporations and foundations, the ETV Endowment is committed to sharing southern storytelling and compelling conversations with viewers across the nation.

This program is supported by Coastal Community Foundation of South Carolina.

This program is made possible by the support of Peter Zamuka and Lynn Baker.

Additional funding for Books by the River is provided by Visit Beaufort, Port Royal, and Sea Islands and Osher Lifelong Learning Institute at USC Beaufort.

(Holly) And here to talk to us today is Dr.

Edda Fields-Black author of Combee, Harriet Tubman The Combahee River Raid and Black Freedom during the Civil War.

Doctor Fields-Black, thank you so much for joining us today.

(Edda) It's my pleasure.

(Holly) I think before we get into the book, it's very important that the viewers have a glimpse of who you are and I think that will really tell us more about the "why" behind this book.

So tell us a little bit about yourself and what you do.

(Edda) Well, I am a granddaughter of The Great Migration, I like to say.

My grandparents, paternal grandparents, left Green Pond, South Carolina, when my father was a few years old.

He's the last of his siblings born there.

They went to Charleston and then to Miami.

So I was born and raised in Miami.

I grew up with my grandparents and we came back every... I grew up visiting my grandparents, and we came back every summer to Green Pond to visit my great grandmother.

So I had this little taste of South Carolina in Miami.

And I didn't, growing up, really understand <laughs> that my grandparents were speaking a special dialect, right?

And then we would go back to South Carolina and everybody spoke it.

So it was all very confusing, but in, in a good, very interesting way.

I went to college at Emory University, and majored in history and English.

Then I did a master's at University of Florida, and then I did another master's and a PhD at University of Pennsylvania.

So since Penn, I, I've been teaching at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh and living in Pittsburgh with my family.

I'm now professor of history, and I direct the Dietrich College Humanities Center.

The way that I think about history is really about finding voices that we haven't heard before, and telling stories that we haven't heard before.

And typically, this involves new sources, right?

I've worked a lot with interdisciplinary sources and I've worked in both West Africa - my work is transnational - as well as the African diaspora.

And I also collaborate with artists and with scientists.

So trying to blur the lines, if you will, of the humanities and expand the humanities, and I call it, "Taking history off of the shelf and putting it on stage," as I did.

Well, first, it's on the wall, in my work with the Smithsonian Museum of African American History and Culture.

And then on stage in my collaboration with John Wineglass.

(Holly) Okay, tell me when the tug at your heart started to write this book and how, if at all those summers in Green Pond, in South Carolina, were a part of that.

(Edda) You know, it's looking back it's always hard to identify that moment, and it was a series of things.

I was working on another book.

I was working on what I thought was going to be a history of the Gullah Geechee, and I was most interested in how people who were enslaved on rice plantations in South Carolina and Georgia, how they came to be Gullah Geechee and hopefully how they came to think of themselves as Gullah Geechee.

That's a tall order.

And so I was still interested in rice, and I've spent most of my career transnational history of rice and rice farmers - West Africa and the South Carolina and Georgia Lowcountry and I was working on the Requiem, and I was working on our family history.

So I had a lot going on, and my work on the Requiem and my work on the Gullah Geechee book, I, for the Gullah Geechee book, I really started for a variety of logistical reasons.

I was working on the Civil War period, and as I got into that period, I started uncovering these sources about the Combee River raid and Minus Hamilton is, I like to say, the star of Combee, at least the leading man of Combee, and the 88 year old man who tells his story of what happened to he and his wife in the raid.

It was one of the first documents I found and I thought, wow, this is exceedingly rare to hear a formerly enslaved person tell their story.

And I put it aside.

<laughs> But there were then I started finding more documents related to the raid that I thought were extraordinary.

Another would be William C Hayward's affidavit.

He was one of the Combee planters who filed for compensation from the Confederate government after the raid, and he listed the names of the people he lost, with their occupations if they knew a trade and the names of the children with their mothers.

And I thought, "Hmm, could I identify the people who escaped in the raid?"

That was like a little, the light kind of flickered on and off, and it went back off because it just seemed impossible.

<laughs> (Holly) Right.

(Edda) But I had these little glimpses that really emboldened me to think that the history was possible.

It was still about three years before I thought, "Okay, this is the book, right?

It's not the history of the Gullah Geechee.

It's the Combee River raid."

(Holly) And what do you think that your book brings out that other books have not covered yet?

(Edda) Well, two things.

Number one is the history, the documented history of Harriet Tubman's Civil War service, which is not documented in the official military record.

But I was able to find, descriptions of what Tubman was doing in the letters of northern abolitionists who came down to Beaufort, Port Royal, the Sea Islands after the Battle of Port Royal.

And so we have a much clearer picture of Tubman's work in the refugee camps and of her role in the Combee River Raid.

The other thing is, who were the people who were freed?

Who were the Combee freedom seekers?

And we know their names now and then, for the main characters, we know their stories.

And I found these stories in the, primarily in the US Civil War pension files, and the pension files and the affidavits that I spoke of before by the Combee planters helped me to identify the people who escaped in the raid in their pension files of the 150 men who joined the army the morning after the raid.

They're telling their stories of bondage and freedom, including where enslaved, where they were born, where they were raised in bondage, how they were mortgaged, sold... passed down within families, given away sometimes as gifts so that they ended up on the Combee plantations.

So I'm actually able to document the lives of the enslaved, and I did that using the planters documents - wills, marriage settlements, estate records, things like that.

So I'm documenting the lives of enslaved people and showing that there's a third source that historians, family members, genealogists can use to identify enslaved people and tell their stories.

And that's the pension files, the Civil War pension files.

(Holly) I can only imagine that the research for this process must have been exhaustive.

But, also one of those things where you just can't stop because - the reason I'm saying that is, I just got into ancestry myself.

And you go, and you go, and you just, you have to kind of put a time limit on yourself.

I've got to put this away at some point.

Can you identify with that feeling?

(Edda) Yes, yes.

I definitely had to stop.

<laughs> I had some very stringent time limits.

It was exhaustive and I was thankfully able to assemble a team of researchers.

And so I'm grateful to the international African-American Museum Center for Family History, (Holly) That's wonderful.

(Edda) for their US Civil War Pension File project, and also for one of their genealogists, Darius Brown, who worked with me.

I had, research assistants who were my graduate students at Carnegie Mellon who handled, I call them, "storytelling."

So, okay, I'm in, I'm writing and I'm sort of bringing in this character, but everybody has to have a backstory, right?

Everything has to have a backstory in order for it to be a narrative.

And so I'd say, "Okay, go find out what you can about this person or this place, this thing."

And, you know, they would send me, this is one of my students.

He would send me a short bibliography.

"Here are the sources.

Boom."

So now I have to read these and pull together how I'm going to weave this new element into the narrative.

And I worked with a curator.

She was at the Senator John Heinz History Center in Pittsburgh for the images of Combee.

That was a lot of work, to pull together over 100 historic images, and get the permissions done and get them into the insert of the book.

(Holly) With all of your research you've done throughout your career, I'm sure it wasn't new for you to... for some of these revelations, but for some of your students, we're talking 20 somethings, right?

(Edda) Yeah.

(Holly) Years old.

What was it like for you to see that in them whenever they make this discovery and read some of these things that are just unfathomable?

(Edda) Yeah, yeah, I think for all of us, it was extremely powerful, and I know for me, it was incredibly emotional.

And I tried to channel that emotion and to channel it into the writing of the book.

And so to write about, you know, reading the documents of... separation, really, and of sale, I tried to channel that emotion so that the reader could understand, so the reader could try to put themselves in the shoes of the enslaved familes, in the shoes of the enslaved people.

And that was really my goal was to humanize, the enslaved people.

For the students, I think they were, they were fascinated and they were captivated.

And for I'm thinking in particular of my graduate research assistant from CMU, Wyatt Erchak.

This was the beginning, transcribing the pension files was the beginning of Wyatt's dissertation, right?

And of him identifying, what he wanted to do, which is to write a new history of the first South Carolina.

So for I think for all of them, it was a starting point for something new.

(Holly) How often did you find yourself having to mentally talk yourself into balancing those emotions?

I mean, a little of it's good, right?

(Edda) Yeah.

(Holly) Because you you want some of that for the reader to feel.

But then there does have to be a balance.

(Edda) Daily.

<laughs> I mean, I would say any time and of course, in a research day I'm doing many different things.

But if I sat down to database, I have a huge, I have several databases, but to database pension files.

And so I'm actually reading the transcriptions and, you know, putting them into my database.

Nine times out of ten, there would be something in there that would make me catch my breath.

So there were other times where it was just, okay, close it.

<laughs> (Holly) Is there anything you can share with us that really stands out, in particular, that really was eye opening to you?

(Edda) Sure.

I think the one that was the most eye opening in the sense that it gave me an idea of what - the potential of the pension files.

I mentioned I was working on my own family history.

I was looking for the Fields family, and working with IAAM Center for Family History, identified Hector Fields as a Civil War veteran from Beaufort, which the family did not know.

So all of this was new information.

And when we were able to find Hector and to find him through his brother's pension file, another veteran learned that my aunt, their sister, was given away as a wedding gift.

(Holly) Wow.

(Edda) So that was something that was very difficult to deal with or, you know?

(Holly) Sure.

(Edda) But it was that one pension file and everything that I learned in it about my own family, the Field's family, about which we knew very, very little, gave me the notion that I could identify the people who liberated in the raid, who were liberated, and tell their stories in bondage and in freedom and tell it in their own words.

(Holly) Right.

(Edda) So.

(Holly) How has that been to teach families more about their families?

What does that experience been like?

(Edda) Absolutely indescribable.

It really is.

And there are families who know enough, you know, and they have, oral narratives that have been passed down from family members through the generations.

And then to be able to document.

(Holly) Yes.

(Edda) Right?

What they've learned about their families or to be able to uncover what they didn't know and never thought they could know, has been incredibly, it's been incredibly rewarding.

(Holly) Yes.

Rewarding for all that hard work.

I'm sure it's been.

What's the timeframe of the process from start to finish on this book?

Oh, it must have been a long time.

(Edda) It's a long time.

(Holly) You put so much into it.

(Edda) I started researching what I thought was going to be a history of the Gullah Geechee in 2014.

(Holly) Okay.

(Edda) And you know, it even that was a part of my ongoing research right on Rice plantations in South Carolina, West Africa, but mainly the South Carolina side.

But I sort of pivoted and said, well, I want to write something broader that's going to include rice, but also the Sea Island cotton plantations, the urban areas.

That was 2014.

Sources that I found in the course of that research are at the core of Combee.

So then I started writing Combee in earnest.

Let's say I decided I'm researching the Combee River Raid.

That was probably 2017.

(Holly) Wow.

This has, like, owned your life for a decade.

(Edda) For a while.

Yes, a very long while.

And then I started writing in 2020.

(Holly) Okay.

(Edda) And I wrote.

And then it went to the printer at the end of 23.

(Holly) Right.

Wow.

That's awesome.

All right, something else awesome that we must mention, it's Pulitzer Prize winning!

So let's talk about that some.

(Edda) Yes.

<laughs> (Holly) What was that like to get that news?

(Edda) Oh, very surprising.

<laughs> Very surprising.

I didn't know that Combee was a finalist.

I didn't even know that the Pulitzer was going to be announced until that morning.

(Holly) Okay.

(Edda) And I was on my way to, I was in California, in Monterey, and I was on my way to the airport after doing events in Monterey and in Oakland.

And I got an email from my editor, and I must have been very organized that morning.

Better organized than I was this morning.

Because I packed and I was ready to go, and I was early, so I opened my email.

(Holly) Ok.

(Edda)And there was this email from my editor, which I thought was very strange, talking about how much he loved working on the project and how much he loved working with me, and he would love to work with me again, and no matter what happened that day, nothing would ever change that.

(Holly) You're like, "This is weird."

(Edda) I thought, what is he talking about?

<both laugh> (Holly) Right.

(Edda) I know because we've talked about how much we enjoyed working together many times, but I thought, "What could be happening today?"

I don't - so I called my mother.

<laughs> And I said, "Mom, listen to this Something's gotten into him.

What is going on?

I don't understand this."

She said, "Well, the Pulitzer is going to be announced today."

And I'm like, "What?"

<laughs> (Holly) That's awesome though.

(Edda) Yeah.

So mom had it on her calendar ever since I told her that Combee was nominated.

And because I had said I didn't want to hear anything about it, (Holly) That's so funny though, that you didn't know.

(Edda) I didn't know.

(Holly) That it was going to be announced that day.

(Edda) I had no idea.

And mom said, "Well, you said you didn't want to think about it.

You didn't want to know about it."

(Holly) And you didn't, did you?

(Edda) I didn't.

<laughs> (Holly) Well, what an honor that is.

And of course, gets more eyes on the book and the story that you want to tell.

What do you hope is the main takeaway for those who get this book in their hands?

(Edda) I have two.

(Holly) Okay.

(Edda) Number one is that Harriet Tubman is a war hero.

You know?

That she sacrificed.

She served her country.

She couldn't enlist, but she sacrificed for freedom and she sacrificed for the Union and for the perfection of our Union.

That's number one, and number two is that... we can actually, and when I say "we," I mean African-Americans, and particularly, African-Americans who are the descendants of the approximately 200,000 black men who served in the US Colored Troops, and the 90,000 it's more than 90,000.

So the 90 plus thousand of them who have pension files that we, that there's actually sources there through which we can identify our enslaved ancestors and we can learn our history going back before the Civil War, onto southern plantations.

And we can pass this information down to our children.

And I think that's something that is incredibly important for the African-American community.

(Holly) Just to fill in those gaps.

(Edda) Absolutely, absolutely (Holly) Means a lot.

Well, thank you for the research.

I know it was a lot, but, certainly paying off and you've already seen that exponentially.

(Edda) Thank you.

(Holly) So thank you very much, and thank you for joining us on the show.

It's been a great conversation.

And thank you, everyone for joining us here on Books by the River.

I'm your host, Holly Jackson.

Until the next book.

I'm going to read from the afterword of Combee.

The Combee Freedom Seekers' acts of liberation and self-liberation erased their own traces in the planters historical records and destroyed those records.

Simultaneously, when the social order turned upside down and the enslaved people liberated themselves, becoming free people - soldiers and liberators - it created a small fissure in what had seemed an impenetrable edifice.

With this crack, black soldiers could support themselves and their families because of the bounties and pensions due them for their military service in the Civil War.

And because of their pension files, they, along with their widows, children and neighbors, could tell their stories of enslavement and freedom in their own words.

The world turned upside down on June 2nd, 1863, and the Combee River raid teaches us much more about the intimate lives, loves, families, and labors of enslaved and formerly enslaved people - finally from their own words - than we ever knew before.

With approximately 83,000 African-American veterans approved for Civil War pensions, there may be tens of thousands more stories their pension files could tell, and thousands of enslaved communities their files could be used to reconstruct.

In commemoration of the 160th anniversary of the Combee River of the Combee River Raid on June 2nd, 2023, we had a lot to celebrate.

We could say we know who risked their freedom and their lives to execute one of the greatest slave rebellions in New World history, and we know who got on the boat liberated themselves and reunited their families in the raid.

Our enslaved ancestors don't have to be nameless, faceless, or story lists any longer.

In addition to freedom, this is one of the greatest and most enduring legacies of the Combee River Raid, and of Harriet Tubman's Civil War service.

We are finally able to say their names and saying our ancestors names and telling our stories is a pillar of black freedom in the 21st century.

♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ (Announcer) Major funding for Books By The River is brought to you by the ETV Endowment of South Carolina, the proud partner of South Carolina ETV and Public Radio.

With the generosity of individuals, corporations and foundations, the ETV Endowment is committed to sharing southern storytelling and compelling conversations with viewers across the nation.

This program is supported by Coastal Community Foundation of South Carolina.

This program is made possible by the support of Peter Zamuka and Lynn Baker.

Additional funding for Books by the River is provided by Visit Beaufort, Port Royal, and Sea Islands and Osher Lifelong Learning Institute at USC Beaufort.

♪ ♪