What You Don't Know About Harriet Tubman's Fight for Freedom!
with Dr. Edda Fields Black
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Jermaine Fowler interviews Dr. Edda Fields Black, who brings Harriet Tubman down from the pedestal of myth and into the gritty reality of a freedom fighter who knew the swamps like the back of her hand. In her book, she traces Tubman’s footsteps in the Combahee River Raid, framed through her own deep roots in the Gullah Geechee community. Here, Tubman isn’t just a figure of lore, but a flesh-and-blood hero, whose battles and victories still echo in the struggles of today.
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Be sure to grab a copy of Dr. Black’s book COMBEE: Harriet Tubman, the Combahee River Raid, and Black Freedom during the Civil War’ in this episode we cover:
Harriet Tubman: Beyond the Myth – The Real Story of a Freedom Fighter
The Combahee River Raid: Uncover the details of the raid that liberated more than 700 slaves.
Gullah Geechee Ties: Explore Tubman's connections to the Gullah Geechee culture, which played a pivotal role in her methods and strategies.
Heroism and Humanity: See Tubman in a new light, as a woman of flesh and blood, whose heroic deeds were as complex as they were courageous.
The Power of Personal Connection in Historical Narratives
Dr. Fields Black's Unique Insight
With roots deeply embedded in the Gullah Geechee community, Dr. Fields Black offers a unique perspective that brings Tubman’s story to life with an authenticity seldom seen in historical texts.
Personal Anecdotes: The book is enriched with personal stories from Dr. Fields Black’s family history, providing a deeper understanding of the cultural and emotional landscapes that shaped Tubman.
A Bridge Between Generations: Learn how the past and present intertwine, making Tubman’s journey relevant to today’s societal challenges.
Understanding the Myths and Realities of Harriet Tubman’s Life
Debunking Common Misconceptions
Tubman is often mythologized in ways that overshadow her true achievements. Dr. Fields Black aims to set the record straight, presenting a Tubman who is both more relatable and more extraordinary.
The Myth of the Lone Hero: Break down the narratives that isolate Tubman's efforts from the broader context of community and collaborative resistance.
The Reality of Strategic Genius: Gain insights into how Tubman's planning and foresight led to successful missions, beyond the simplistic tales of escape.
Why This Book Matters Now
The Relevance of Tubman's Legacy in Modern Times
Harriet Tubman’s story is not just a chapter from the past but a continuous inspiration for justice and equality. Dr. Fields Black’s book comes at a critical time, reminding us of the importance of preserving history and learning from it.
Inspiration for Today: Draw parallels between Tubman’s time and current social justice movements.
Education and Engagement: Encourage a new generation to explore and reflect on the complexities of history through a more informed and nuanced lens.
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Jermaine (00:01)
Joining us today is Dr. Etta Fields Black. She is a brilliant mind in the world of historical scholarship. She's not an average historian. She's a trailblazer who has unearthed the connections between West African rice and the African diaspora. I want you to imagine someone deep diving into the anthropology of rice farmers and the Gullah Geechee culture that I have spent time with myself. And...
She is someone who just goes so in depth into her research. It's mind blowing. And she has a book that she has written called Combi Harriet Tubman, the Combahee River Raid, a black freedom during the civil war. And this book is not just a read, it's a reclamation and an exploration and a proclamation of the brilliance of Harriet Tubman. I want to welcome you, Dr. Fields Black to the Humanity Archive podcast.
Edda Fields-Black (00:55)
Thank you so much. I am so excited to be here. Thank you, Jermaine, for inviting me. And thank you for all of your work on recovering the humanity of African-Americans, which has been written out of our history.
Jermaine (01:11)
Absolutely, absolutely. I'm so excited to have you here. And I wanna, before we get into your book, go into your, the core of your research before that, as far as the rice farmers in the Southern United States, you did a very, I mean, you really just dove really deep into this history and its connection to West Africa. Can you tell us a little bit more about your interest in that research and just the connections that you've made?
Edda Fields-Black (01:37)
Yeah, sure. I came by rice through my curiosity about the Gullah Geechee and about my father's family who are from Colleton County, South Carolina, Green Pond and Whitehall. And we found out some more information that maybe I'll talk about later that they're from Beaufort. But what I wanted to know, what I wanted to know is
how the Gullah Geechoo were connected to West Africa, and rice became that prism for me. And I was very curious about how peasant farmers in West Africa developed their, particularly mangrove growing, mangrove rice growing technology before the transatlantic slave trade. And I chose mangroves because it was the closest to the title rice technology that was used in South Carolina and Georgia.
And so I did do a deep dive and one of my specialties is
Expanding the archive, if you will, expanding it in my early work interdisciplinarily. So when those archival sources are not available or they're written by, you know, missionaries, European missionaries, slave traders, colonial officers who don't see the humanity of African and African descended people. How do I find, how do I tell the story through
the words, right, of the people themselves. And so in my first book, I used historical linguistics and oral traditions to tell the story of the rice farmers and how they...
created their technology.
Jermaine (03:33)
That's interesting. And how do you think, I mean, in academia, do you think that the oral record is respected as such as literature? I've written a lot about this and I have found, you know, a lot of times that oral history is not as respected as, you know, literary history. How do you see that?
Edda Fields-Black (03:56)
Well, I think it depends on the subfield. Among Africanists, yes, the oral record is equal, if not more important, because when you're talking about the pre-colonial period, you don't have sources that are written by Africans. They're very, you can probably count them on one hand, right, those that we've been able to find in sub-Saharan Africa. And their whole methodologies, you know.
Scholars have spent decades understanding how to collect them, how to interpret them, etc. I think that in the African American history, the history of the African diaspora, oral histories, as opposed to oral traditions, are also incredibly important. And it's the same issue. The fact that finding sources that are written by...
the people whose history you're attempting to write are very rare, particularly when you go into the colonial period and the antebellum period, you know, sources that are written by enslaved people, even enslaved people telling their stories, slave narratives, you know, and that kind of thing. So I think that it's really about, well, yes, I do think that oral sources are accepted.
as being as credible as written sources. And I think that all historical sources have silences and biases and things that have to be interrogated. And I think this generation of historians, myself included, are much more adept at interrogating all of that.
Jermaine (05:46)
Yeah, I think it's very important to gather the history in such a way where you are also getting the perspective of the people themselves, right? And a lot of Black history that we see is not so much of what the people said about themselves, what other people said about them writing stories and narratives are being created around that. So I do appreciate that this new generation of historians, you know, with more tools at their disposal are able to gather the words of.
Edda Fields-Black (05:48)
Hmm
Jermaine (06:13)
you know, not only Black people, but a lot of marginalized people through history who might not have written down their stories and who have a deeper appreciation for the oral traditions of history where they're passing down the stories from generation to generation in that way. And so connected then to the Gullah culture, I've lived in Savannah, Georgia for about a year and just kind of had the privilege of going back and forth some over to South Carolina. And, you know, I think that you think about these descendants of
enslave people and what really gets me though, and I don't know if you could speak to this, is that the communities are vanishing there, right? You have some 200,000 voices, many of them have had economic constraints, you know, land rights being taken. These are people who are carrying the weight of this history, this unique culture that's fading away and, you know, just the vanishing of the Gullah Geechee. Can you talk to that and this very tragic, I think, chapter...
in history where this is happening and how the past connects to the present with that.
Edda Fields-Black (07:14)
Yes, unfortunately, over the decades, people have been displaced in large part because of heirs property and the way that developers can use heirs property, meaning that when a family member passes, dies without a will, that property transfers to the heirs.
generation after generation after generation you have large groups of family members who are uh... owners of property in common uh... and their laws you know in certain counties that developers only need to get one person in that family group to be willing to sell uh... and the land particularly on the water you know in the sea islands
and has been very coveted by developers seeking to, whether it's housing developments or resort developments, you name it, private clubs, that land is incredibly valuable. And the newest challenge is climate change. The newest challenge is sea level rise and the way that climate change is displacing people because that land is
Jermaine (08:37)
Mm-hmm.
Edda Fields-Black (08:45)
below sea level, quite a bit below sea level. And the increased storms and the increased rainfall, the amount of rainfall, the frequency of rainfall, just the flooding that happens is putting a lot of people who have been able to hold onto their land in peril. And so the Gullah Geechee are very proud people. I'm part of the Gullah Geechee diaspora. And you know.
some the first African Americans to own land. This is a very important history. It's a very important place and it would really be a shame to lose it.
Jermaine (09:26)
Wow. How does that personal connection fuel for you like a deeper sense of urgency when it comes to preserving and advocating for these histories that are endangered?
Edda Fields-Black (09:37)
I tell ya.
At various moments in my career, it has fueled me differently, but it has always fueled me. As I mentioned, my dad was born in Colleton County in Green Pond. He was the last of his siblings to be born in the country, as he would call it.
My grandparents then migrated to Charleston and then to Miami, Florida where I was born and raised. So we're a Miami family with South Carolina roots and you find that up and down the East Coast because people from the Gullah Geechee corridor migrated, you know, in these generations in the earlier 20th century. I was always curious about my grandparents' culture.
you know growing up in miami and hearing their speech patterns which i had were very different from my own seeing that my dad could understand them but didn't speak the way they spoke we would go to their house and be like watching a tennis match we look at them we look at him we look at that my mother my sister and i you know we didn't know what was going on uh... we spent time every summer in south carolina with my great-grandmother
And my mother, who is a historian, attempted to document my dad's family's history. So I went to cemeteries. I spent a lot of time in cemeteries. We also came back for burials. Everyone in my grandmother's generation was buried in Green Pond. Fast forward to me being the rice historian, right?
and working in West Africa. And because I worked in West Africa, I lectured a lot in South Carolina. And I was doing research, this is after my first book came out, doing early research on my second book, which has now become Combi. It went through a couple iterations. And decided on a weekend while I was between two speaking engagements.
that I was going to go to the cemetery and try to start the family history. And I went to the cemetery that I knew, which is owned by the church, which is our family church. And I documented all of the graves again, sort of redoing what my mother did. And I looked around and I thought, well, where are the fields graves? In this entire cemetery, there's only three or four fields.
buried here, one of whom is my grandfather. So I thought, okay, that's, it's always, it always puzzled me that my grandmother's family, the Frasiers, the Richards, would take up the whole church. And my grandfather's family, the Fields, would have a pew, one pew. So I, I had asked our family.
what's the word I'm looking for, patriarch, there we go, about this and he said, oh, well the fields came from Beaufort. And I thought, and this was years before, I tucked that in the back of my head and I remember asking him, Beaufort, where in Beaufort, he said, Paris Island. I said, well, why did they come? He said, they came because of the war. I thought, okay. Okay, I don't know what to do with that, but I knew that we in Colleton County were a branch.
and that the tree had to be planted somewhere else. I just didn't know where the tree was. Maybe the tree was in Beaufort. I'm like, okay. Okay, Cousin Jonas, I hear what you're saying. I'm filing it away. And that's all I had. So fast forward, one of my cousins, one of Cousin Jonas's sons, we were in town and family came over to greet us. We came down from Pittsburgh. He handed me an envelope.
He said, here, Miss Historian, this is the family history. Do it. And he had gone through the census. So he had our family line and our oldest living relative, Hector. I was like, oh, okay, this is my job now. All right. So, you know, these are pieces that are coming together. Pieces, pieces. So,
Jermaine (13:59)
I'm not gonna say anything.
Edda Fields-Black (14:22)
I'm going to go back to the cemetery, okay? Because this time when I'm in town and I went to the cemetery and I couldn't find the Fields family, I went back to Cousin Jonas who had told me that the family was from Beaufort, my grandfather's cousin. And I said, Cousin Jonas Fields, where is the Fields family buried? And he gave me the name of a plantation. And I was like, I'm from Miami, okay?
Jermaine (14:50)
Thank you.
Edda Fields-Black (14:51)
We don't do plantations. Where is this plantation? What? A what? I Googled it, it's a rice plantation. I was like, okay, at least I know I can go there. So I called my rice colleagues. I got access to the plantation. I went to the plantation. I was shocked. I was, I was shaken to my core, okay?
This is the resting place of my ancestors. At the time, one of, okay, and keep in mind that I went looking for the graves of the Fields family. My cousin, Jonas Fields, told me that the cemetery was grown up, okay, so it's overgrown, this time of year. He said, and the Fields family's graves are unmarked.
I had no idea what he was talking about. Like I said, I'm from Miami. And you know, in Miami, if you can't afford to put a tombstone down, there's a little thing, little marker, name, birth and death dates, until you can afford to buy the tombstone. So that's what I was expecting. I got out there.
Grown up meant that it was overgrown. Unmarked meant that our ancestors' resting places were depressions in the ground, which you could barely see because it was grown up. I also found that my grandmother's family was buried in the same plantation cemetery. Their graves were marked, some of them. I'm sure there's many more. And one of them was open.
Jermaine (16:18)
Mm.
Wow.
Edda Fields-Black (16:47)
It was full of water and my ancestors' remains were floating at the top.
Jermaine (16:52)
Wow.
must have felt very heavy, I'm sure, to see that. And you're already feeling the heaviness of the moment, even just being in the place that your ancestors were, where they lived, where they worked, where they loved, where they connected with each other. And then to see that as like just a pretty terrible punctuation of that journey. Like I can only imagine how that felt in that moment.
Edda Fields-Black (17:15)
Yeah, and it unfolded over a period of years because you don't go, you don't see something like that and then unsee it and go back to your business as usual life. For me, that was impossible. There was a new normal. You know, I felt as if I was living on my ancestors' backs. I felt as if I had a responsibility that I had not taken up.
Jermaine (17:26)
Mm-mm.
Edda Fields-Black (17:45)
I felt as if I was called to do something that I had not done and I better figure it out pretty damn quick. You know, they were calling me to play my part, right? And to play my part in telling this story. And as I was writing the epilogue for Combi, and as you mentioned, it is a reclamation, you know?
Jermaine (17:54)
Thank you.
Edda Fields-Black (18:15)
It's about documenting the lives. It's about Harriet Tubman, and it's about Tubman's Civil War service. And I've got documents in there that haven't been seen before, and aspects of her service that we did not know about. It is also very much about the freedom seekers who escaped in the raid, and documenting their lives, and telling their stories.
Jermaine (18:36)
Hmm.
Edda Fields-Black (18:44)
in their own words, the stories of their intimate lives, the stories of their families, going back in some cases, three generations. We haven't seen freedom seekers. We haven't seen enslaved people. We will not, we don't know enslaved people the way we're gonna know the combi freedom seekers. And it was a very painstaking, meticulous, tedious process of recovery.
with lots of different kinds of historical documents, you know, sifting through piles, and it's like haystacks and haystacks and haystacks to find a needle. And for me, what I realized is I was writing the epilogue of the book was that I was looking for Hector's descendants.
for the nameless and the faceless enslaved people who we've never seen in the historical record. We haven't been able to access the historical record whose lives I was able to recover finally through the pension files. And I'll say spoiler alert that in this process of recovery, and I worked closely with the International African American Museum,
Center for Family History in Charleston. I could not have done the genealogical work without IAAM Center for Family History. And it's the former director who's now retired, Tony Carrier, who gave me the gumption, the notion, the audacity that I could actually do this from the beginning. And it was Tony who found Hector Fields.
Jermaine (20:39)
Hmm.
Edda Fields-Black (20:40)
And we knew Hector. I mean, it's a lot. But go back to the envelope that my cousin gave me, cousin Jonas's son, and he's like, here, take it. Do it. So I had Hector's direct line, that's all I had. From Hector down to my grandfather. Yeah, from Hector down to my grandfather.
Okay, Hector Fields. Well, Tony, I don't know how she, she was helping me find Hector, and she found a number of Hectors in Beaufort and Colleton County. They were mainly in Beaufort. She found a Hector who was a USCT soldier. We didn't know if this was my Hector, okay? And it was a bunch of Hectors, and it was sometime in one census,
He was in, there was a Hector in Beaufort and Colleton County with two different families. Okay. And our family was in Colleton County, but the Hector, there was another Hector, there was a Hector with another family in Beaufort County. And then he went to Beaufort and stayed in Beaufort. And it seemed like every census he had a different wife with different stepchildren and lots of stepkids.
with different last names in his, this is how I suspect they were stepkids or grandkids. So anyway, I was like, Tony, I don't know what to do with that. Tony did the detective work and actually found a pension file for Jonas Fields, who was Hector's brother.
Jermaine (22:21)
Thank you.
Wow, it starts to come together.
Edda Fields-Black (22:33)
she found Hector and the sister that we didn't even know about, and their parents in a pension file for Jonas Fields. We had never heard of Jonas Fields. I thought that Jonas Fields, who told me about the cemetery, who was my grandfather's cousin, that's the only Jonas Fields we knew about. We didn't know that we had a third great uncle named Jonas.
And in the pension file, it said that Hector and Jonas were enslaved in Buford. We knew where Jonas, his sister, their parents were enslaved and who enslaved them. That they went to Colleton County. They went to Whitehall, which is where the Fields family lives right now, after the war to Hayward's rice lands. That's where they live now. That was Hector.
And Tony Carrier found that Hector fought in the Combi raid. I... You couldn't make it up. She suspected it. And I was like, okay Tony, I don't know what to tell you. That's a lot of Hector's. He had sons named Hector come to find out there was a Hector Jr. who died at a year and a half.
Jermaine (23:35)
Wow. You couldn't make this connection up, right? I mean, this is, wow. Wow.
Yeah.
Edda Fields-Black (23:57)
a time of famine and sickness in Colleton County. And it was my suspicion, and Tony would agree with me, that after his son died, Hector went back to Beaufort. Now Hector did have two families. One in each county. Yeah, Hector didn't let any grass grow under his feet. And we were the second family.
Jermaine (24:15)
Yeah, Hector.
Actors moving around. Yeah.
Edda Fields-Black (24:26)
So when his son died and he had a young wife and he had adult older sons in Colleton County, sons that were probably of age to be self-sufficient.
Jermaine (24:40)
So when you started this, you didn't know about this personal connection. I mean, this is all unfolding as you are just, you know, family history connected to Hector and then the Combahee River Raid. And then you, oh, I want to go back though to Harriet Tubman, right? You know, it's this kind of centerpiece to all of this. But I mean, that personal connection is profound. And Harriet Tubman though, being somebody who, I want to see if you could help us separate the woman from the myth, right? Because she emerges in history as this.
Edda Fields-Black (24:55)
Yeah.
Jermaine (25:10)
almost superheroic figure, often credited with leading 200 enslaved people to freedom. We know that number is usually said to be inflated. It's probably closer to around 70 people, right? And one of my favorite quotes from her, she said, or at least it's attributed to her, even with the quotes, you don't know what she said, maybe what she didn't say. But it was a quote where I was the conductor of the Underground Railroad for eight years. And I can say what most conductors can't say that I never...
ran my train off track and I never lost a passenger. And again, I don't even know if that's just attributed to her, if she said it, but I think her legacy is, you know, often inflated to these mythical proportions. So what do you think this tendency to mythologize figures like Tubman says about this collective need for heroes? And you know, how does this affect our understanding of her and her real legacy?
Edda Fields-Black (26:04)
Yeah, well I think there is a collective need for heroes, particularly when it comes to slavery. I think particularly for African Americans and people of African descent in the New World and the diaspora, you know, we so much want to look at someone who was about freedom and liberation.
And it's very hard for us in the 20th and 21st century to think of our ancestors in bondage. And so Tubman becomes superhuman almost for her selflessness, for her sacrifice, for her courage, to not only liberate herself, but to go back into the prison house of bondage and bring other people out.
You know, I mean, it's just, it's mind boggling. And I feel like Tubman and even someone like Frederick Douglas, these are names we know, these are names, these are stories that have been told that we hold up because the multitude, the masses of names we don't know, the masses of stories we don't know.
and stories of people who were never able to get to liberty before the end of the Civil War and after the end of the Civil War. People who were enslaved until the bitter end. So I think that's a very deep need in not just African American but American society.
because we still haven't grappled with slavery and its legacy.
Jermaine (27:58)
Yeah, absolutely. And I very much agree with that. I think to elevate Tubman to the status of a myth, right, it isn't just a glorification. It's part of that reclamation that we talked about earlier and, you know, an assertion of her life and legacy in the face of a history that's still marginalized, still silenced, especially black voices, black achievements. I'm a big fan of Joseph Campbell's work. He talks about the power of myth and.
Again, if you apply that to this, it's not just about spinning tales. It's about, uh, uplifting that heroism, that, uh, those value and qualities of a person, right? And, um, yeah, I think that's desperately needed, you know, even if it is shrouded in some myth, but you know, there's so much truth behind the myth as well of the story. And I do want to get your perspective, uh, you know, as a serious historian, someone in academia, uh, come across this, uh,
There's a YouTube channel and there's a guy who kind of claims that, you know, Harriet Tubman is this character made up by the government. And he's saying that this is to suggest that this whole narrative of slavery is to kind of downplay that black people are actually indigenous. And I want to bring this up because this, you know, this has gone viral. It has millions of views. Millions of people are sharing it. And in my mind, I think about that scientific truism, right? Where it says.
Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. But I just want to know your perspective. Why do you think things like this catch on? You know, we have this digital age, right? Where people can, you know, have these platforms and say these things and then they catch on like wildfire. People want to share them. It's very provocative. You know, people want to relieve that, you know, and you do this hard hitting academic research. How do we get the truth out there in a world full of these YouTube theories?
Edda Fields-Black (29:53)
Ah, that's an interesting question. I'm not familiar with this YouTube channel. I think it feeds into the backlash that is against teaching hard history. I think that one of the downfalls of social media, I don't know, it's not really a downfall, but I would say one of the
pitfalls, how about that, of social media, is that everybody now has a platform to say whatever they want to say, you know, whether it's true or not. And as long as other people want to hear it, well, they can say it. And they can say it whether anybody wants to hear it or not. But they can also, they can often, using social media platforms, always find an audience somewhere.
I think that we as academics, you know, and traditional academics and sort of old school academics, and I'm kind of on the edge. I was trained to be an old school academic, but I've sort of reinvented myself in a variety of ways to be a new school academic. I think that we have to get our, we have to find ways.
Jermaine (31:03)
Thank you.
Edda Fields-Black (31:18)
to get our research out of the ivory tower and get it into the hands of people. And we have to meet people where they are. And we've got to educate them from there. And this is one of the things I love about your podcast.
Jermaine (31:40)
Yeah, I really try to be someone who bridges that gap, you know, myself of meeting people where they are, whether it be social media, especially young people, I try to reach and, you know, it's books like yours though, that they need to be in the hands of the people. They need this history. This very much writes a lot of the wrongs of history in the narrative, right? This is a corrective to the years of misrepresentation of people like Tubman. I mean, Tubman, even herself being somebody who's.
been mythologized in some terrible ways too. I can't remember the historian. I wrote about this in my book. They said Harriet Tubman could lift great weights. And she has very racist depictions of her as being this kind of superhuman kind of monstrous black woman who could do all these weird, amazing things. So the characterization of her has often been one that is a misrepresentative of who she truly was. So to have a book like yours that
humanizes her. I really think that's important, but a lot of people, you know, it definitely needs to be out there more where a lot of times though books like this can kind of just circulate amongst academics and not always get into the hands of the people who really, really need them, right, to bring her story to life as it should be.
Edda Fields-Black (32:56)
Yeah, it's a challenge. It's a challenge that we've got to be serious about taking up. And when I was in the cemetery in Colleton County, 10 years ago, to me that was the challenge that my ancestors were calling me to, to not just tell, not just write history for my colleagues and my graduate students.
that their story had to be told to everybody. And it had to be told in different formats so that everybody, people who don't read books, people who don't read academic books could still learn this history and be changed by it. And I felt like they were telling me that I was asleep at the switch, that was my calling and I hadn't...
I hadn't taken it up. I hadn't taken it seriously.
Jermaine (34:02)
I will say though, some people were sleeping on some of these academic books though, because they're riveting and written with all the journalistic depth and storytelling. And definitely I've read some very great academic nonfiction books. I want to go back though and see if you could set the stage for us about the Combahee River Raid, right? And just kind of talk to me about how this started and just some of the details of this
Edda Fields-Black (34:23)
Mm-hmm.
Jermaine (34:31)
campaign, right? I think a lot of people still don't even know that Harriet Tubman was the first woman in U.S. history to lead our military campaign. And so, you know, first I would like to ask, why do you think that aspect of her story isn't emphasized in the education system or in the popular narrative? And then can you kind of take us into the raid itself a little bit?
Edda Fields-Black (34:48)
the team.
Yeah, well I think that people don't know about the raid. The raid doesn't get nearly as much attention as the rest of Tubman's life, in large part because of the sources. People really haven't dug into the sources about the Combee River Raid and Tubman's role in it. I'll also say that I came to the Combee River Raid because of my work in Rice.
You know, the raid took place on seven rice plantations along the lower Cumbee River. And I tell people, what was I supposed to do? If I see Harriet Tubman standing in my rice fields where I'm working, what am I supposed to do? I'm just let her stand there, really? And I felt like that was an aspect of the story, you know, when the story about the Cumbee River raid is told.
Jermaine (35:36)
Thank you.
Yeah.
Edda Fields-Black (35:53)
that that's the part that people totally miss and I thought it was a very important part. So you know, the Compi River Raid really starts in November of 1861. This is when the whole thing starts with the Battle of Port Royal and the U.S. Navy driving its armada up Port Royal Sound and the planters, the white planters, slave-holding planters of
Port Royal and the Sea Islands fleeing, taking with them whatever they could carry, trying to, you know, a lot of times at gunpoint, force their house servants to go with them and enslaved people hiding and refusing to go. Well, once the U.S. Army captured Beaufort, Port Royal, and the Sea Islands,
those enslaved people came out and were under the protection of then the US Army. So it was a joint army-navy operation. They weren't free immediately, but they were contraband, in quotes, they were contraband of war, which meant that they would not be returned to the people who held them in bondage.
and they would go on to be the first freed people, the first African Americans to be freed and to be freed before the Emancipation Proclamation. This created a storm in the abolitionist community. This was like what abolitionists in the North had been waiting for. You know, they were up there lecturing and having teas and, you know, dinner parties, you know, for the slaves.
And all of a sudden you have about 8 to 10,000 enslaved people who are on the edge of freedom and they need help. And they got to organizing, right? Sending volunteers down to be teachers, to be superintendents, missionaries, sending relief supplies. And it got the attention of Tubman.
and it got the attention of the governor of Massachusetts, John Andrew. So Andrew ends up sending Tubman down to Beaufort, South Carolina. And he sent her to the architects of what becomes what's called the Port Royal Experiment, which was at the time the largest social movement in history, to be a spy and to be a scout and to be a nurse.
So Tubman arrives, and there's many people who she already knows. These are the abolitionists and their children, many people from Boston where she spent a lot of time in the abolitionist community in the late 1850s. And it's like that those communities, Boston, Philly, New York, Massachusetts, I should say, kind of get transported to coastal South Carolina.
She is, you know, the Port Royal Experiment primarily takes place in the rural areas on the Sea Islands. Tubman was in the city. She was in the town. She was in Buford. She was working in the refugee camps. And she, as one, as William Lloyd Garrison's son reported, made it her business to see all of the refugees.
as they came from Confederate territory. And she interviewed them. Okay, she debriefed them. And it's important to remember that the U.S. Army controlling Beaufort, Port Royal, and the Sea Islands was like a magnet to enslaved people in the surrounding areas. So the people on the Combi are
40 miles away? People all around, anybody who could get to Buford any way, I argue they knew they could be free. They knew freedom. They knew where freedom was. They knew the direction of freedom. Legally, they're not free yet, but those people are not in bondage. Now, the rice planters, after the Battle of Port Royal,
they decided they weren't leaving. Like the planners on the Sea Island cotton plantations who fled as the US Navy Armada came. They decided they were not leaving. Why? Because rice was so lucrative. And they figured they could stick it out, they could block the rivers, they could hunker down, and they could continue to force these black people to grow rice. And they could get a crop,
and then another crop and another crop and they were just going to keep at it. This is the Combee. There were planters along other rivers who left and the Confederate government did tell them a couple of times to leave and go inland and they refused. On the Combee they refused. So Tubman is working in the refugee camps. She's debriefing people.
people who were coming in, some of whom came from the Combi, and I've been able to document those people who were from the plantations that are raided, who get to Beaufort to the refugee camps working for the U.S. Army before the raid. At least one of them joins the second South Carolina volunteers and goes back and fights in the raid.
I will say that my ancestor, Hector Fields, was probably freed during the Battle of Fort Royal, or shortly thereafter. He joins the second South Carolina volunteers. He fights in the raid. His brother, his sister, his parents are enslaved in downtown Beaufort and they get taken, because they're house servants, they get taken by the slaveholders into the interior.
Jonas in the interior escaped, but it was like in 1864 and joined the US Colored Troops. So you have this process which is part of the battle of Port Royal that, part of the Port Royal experiment is the enlistment of black troops, the enlistment of black men into the US Army. So some of these men, most of these men, able bodied men.
18 to 40, who liberated themselves after the Battle of Port Royal, are now willing to fight in the U.S. Army for the freedom of other Black people who are still enslaved. Harriet Tubman is willing to put her life and her freedom on the line. You have older men, men who were too old to enlist, working as spies and scouts for the U.S. Army.
putting everything on the line for other black people to be free.
So Tubman in her intelligence gathering was able to find the people who were forced, the black people who were forced to put torpedoes on the Cumbee River for the Confederate army. And
She, I should have said this before, she is the leader of a group of men. These men are spies, scouts, and pilots. We know who they are. I've been able to trace most of them. There are a couple, maybe two, that are lost to history, but most of them I know who they are and their stories are in the book. And with her group of men, she is able to
find the people, the men who laid the torpedoes and oversee the removal of the torpedoes. Well, this opens the Cumbee River up. It opens the Cumbee River up to the U.S. Army. And there was a lot of controversy among Civil War historians who didn't believe that there were actually torpedoes on the Cumbee River. And I was able to find the documentation.
and even a description of what the torpedoes looked like. So documentation is very important.
Jermaine (45:10)
Hmm. Yeah. I mean, talk about setting the record straight and ending the disputes. I mean, like you're correcting the record again. I mean, these are things that have been disputed amongst, uh, you know, people who've been studying this and then you come in, I'm sure that was a, a very, uh, proud moment for you to be able to find that and be able to present that research and evidence.
Edda Fields-Black (45:32)
Absolutely. And there were a lot of, a couple Civil War historians with whom I'm in, conversation and communication who doubted Tubman's role in the raid as it had been written previously until they read Combi, right? And so that documentation is really important. I don't think it can be underestimated.
in terms of African Americans, in terms of people of African descent, in terms of women, right? Yes, I think the oral record is important and indispensable, really, but I think we're also up against the fact that some people only respect documents.
Jermaine (46:22)
Absolutely.
Edda Fields-Black (46:23)
And how do you find the documents that are, especially in Tupman's case, when the military commanders were not writing about her. The military record does not mention her at all. How do you find those documents? Okay, so anyway, they found the torpedoes, they took them out, they opened up the river. And we know now that the torpedoes were there, we know what they looked like.
So June 1st, about 9 p.m., three gunboats left Buford, and they traveled up.
to the Kusaw River. One of them ran aground at the Kusaw River and one of the things I'm able to show in the book, one of Tubman's spy scouts and pilots in her ring was from Kusaw Island. And I've got his Freedman's bank account record which shows that he said his daddy was one of the Combee planters.
and he's described as being biracial. He lists the name of his father and his father owned Cyprus plantation on the Kambi. Cyprus, many of the reports indicate Cyprus may have been the target of the raid. One of the freedom seekers who escapes before the raid
goes to Beaufort, enlists in the second South Carolina and volunteers, and goes back to fight in the raid, was enslaved on Cyprus and his parents and his siblings were still enslaved in bondage on Cyprus plantation. And the owner of Cyprus, William C. Hayward, was also one of the officers of the Confederate
the battle of Port Royal. So one thing that you see during the Civil War is that these US Army units, they were targeting, they called them, what did they call them? Something about the rebels, they called them rebels, you know, but they would go to their houses and they would raid them, right? We're going to go to this area, notorious rebels.
Jermaine (48:41)
Bye.
Edda Fields-Black (49:06)
They were looking for them. Who are these Confederate officers? And if we're on that river, you know, there was a raid up the Santee River by the US Army and they raided plantations. They raided the plantation of a cousin of Arthur Blake, his cousin Walter Blake owned a plantation on the Cumbee.
Blake's had been sending enslaved people back and forth between the Santee and the Combee. Those Santee people, some of whom were born on the Combee, end up in Buford before the raid. Okay? And they targeted Arthur Blake because he wasn't in the Confederate army at all, but he was in England actually.
But he was allowing his plantation to be used by Confederate forces. They were stationed there. So they came for William C. Hayward in the raid. And I think that they took the other plantations in the process, but he was the target. And the pilot, spy scout pilot.
in Tupman's ring who helped them get up the Coussar said he was William C. Hayward's illegitimate son after the war. So the Coussar was a risky maneuver. You know, it's a river getting to the mouth of the river. There are a lot of sandbars. They lost a boat, but they saved a lot of time versus going around St. Helena Sound. So it was a risky maneuver.
Jermaine (50:39)
Wow.
Edda Fields-Black (50:58)
But some people would say, most people would say it paid off to get them up the mouth of the combi. You know, they left about 9 p.m. They reached the mouth of the combi about four to five in the morning. When they arrive at the first rice plantation, four to five a.m., the enslaved people are in the rice fields hoeing rice at four o'clock in the morning. The raid took place
under the full moon. And so the light of the full moon helped them to navigate up the river. But even the light of the full moon did not illuminate the rice fields and the snakes and the alligators that were in there. So they come up the river with two boats instead of three. They blow the steam whistle and the enslaved people run.
you know, they run from these seven plantations. Plantations adjacent to the seven had been evacuated. Those planters had evacuated their enslaved populations. And once the boats dock and they dock in two places, the soldiers get off, it's about 300 soldiers. They get off and they begin not only, you know,
freedom seekers onto the boats, but burning all of the plantation houses, you know, the barns, the store houses, the grain houses, all of that, kitchens, they just burn them to the ground. One of my proudest moments, and I think I've said that the book is really, you know, the backbone of the book is identifying the freedom seekers and telling their stories, telling their stories about the raid, telling their stories of their lives before...
during and after the raid. And one of the stars of the book, his name is Minus Hamilton. Mr. Hamilton says that he's 88 years old at the time of the raid. And he in perfect color tells his story of he, his wife, his daughter, son-in-law and granddaughter getting to the boats. And it's so beautiful and it's so moving. And Ms.
Jermaine (53:25)
There were 700 people, that's what I've read, that were freed.
Edda Fields-Black (53:29)
756 according to Tubman. Yes. And I argue that this was the largest slave rebellion in US history. This was a slave rebellion. Right. This is what John Brown had dreamed of. And once they get on the boats and go back to downtown Beaufort
and Tubman gives a speech in a church. 150 men from the Combi join the second South Carolina volunteers. This is the next morning. So this is also John Brown's dream to arm the liberated people so that they go on and fight for the freedom of others.
Jermaine (54:18)
there's poetic justice and the fact that they did burn the very rice that the planter stayed to try to reap these harvests and economic benefits from and then there's also poetic justice and the fact that people are liberated and then turned around and joined up to take up arms to fight and you know and I always think that's very profound to me of like people not only getting their own freedom but then turning around and
fighting for the freedom of other people, that selfless act that you see over and over again, not only with Tubman, but so many other countless stories. And I really think it's just a beautiful thing too. It sounds to me like your book is, it's centered around some stories of Tubman, but there's also these personal connections where you have family connected to this raid, and then you're also pulling stories from some of those 700 some odd people that were involved in the raid too and shining lights on their stories. And
So we can see this richness and just, you know, you're painting this canvas on a full picture of the raid, you know, connected to Tubman, but also other lives that were affected. And then the past connection to the present too, with your own personal connection. So yeah, that's, there's been a lot of surprises in this interview, especially with the personal connection. I was not expecting that story. And yeah, that's kind of sitting with me still right now, like the weight of that.
Edda Fields-Black (55:43)
Thank you, thank you. It is poetic justice, you know? And I can only imagine what it must have felt like to see these plantations go up in flames, minus Hamilton gives us his take, and he is also completely in awe of the second South Carolina volunteers. If you can imagine an elderly black man who was born into bondage,
who lived his entire life in bondage, who never thought in his wildest imaginations that he would be free and that he would see other people free, for him to see these black men in uniform.
coming to help him to liberation. He's just in awe. And he talks about how they hold their heads up, right? They hold their heads up, and then they turned around and burned everything to the ground. He is completely in awe. And he says that, you know, he is so grateful for the children, right? The soldiers, he's so grateful for the children.
because children, how does he put it, children can.
Like children can run to freedom, but the old folks have to go slow. He's like, these, these black men, they not playing. They're taking it down. And.
Jermaine (57:13)
Mm-hmm.
Yeah.
Yeah, a lot of people don't realize that. They don't think about that. The elderly, how do they escape? When you think of even the Underground Railroad, I've read that it was a large percentage of men, right? Because women connected to children, infants, I mean, how are you gonna run away with the infant on your back, right? So a lot of times, people don't have those nuances in the stories like this was worse for women. If you're elderly, you're 88 years old, like how are you gonna run away so to have this liberating force come.
You know, and I can only imagine too, and the moonlight in the background and the flames flickering of the plantations that you've had to be forced to get up at, you know, if they're working at four, I mean, they must've had to get up at three to get ready, you know, to get out to the fields and everything. And wow, that's deep.
Edda Fields-Black (57:50)
Mm-hmm.
Right.
And I'll have, you know, one of the, another thing that I'm very proud of with the book is that I spent a lot of time on these comfy plantations. I have walked in the, you know, where the enslaved people walked. I have been in those rice fields. And so I'm here to tell you it was no small feat to get up out of those rice fields.
to run to the river, right? And even how long would it take? You said they had to get up at three o'clock. Well, the rice fields were at least a mile from the slave cabins, you know, a mile in the dark with the snakes at three o'clock, 3.30 in the morning, you know, to stand in water, up to your knee, you know? I did all of that. I tested all of that. I did not.
Jermaine (58:48)
Wow.
Yes.
Edda Fields-Black (59:07)
Okay, let me one caveat. I did not walk to the rice fields at three in the morning. I didn't do that. But I had spent enough time standing in the rice fields in broad daylight to tell you that there are plenty of gators in daylight, right, especially in that time of year. And so I really wanted to understand so that I could recreate for the reader what our ancestors went through.
Jermaine (59:13)
Yeah.
Edda Fields-Black (59:37)
You know, what they went through, what kind of conditions they faced.
Jermaine (59:44)
Yeah, I think that's...
Edda Fields-Black (59:45)
So maybe we can begin to get our heads around why for those who were able to liberate themselves.
Going back into slavery was worse than death. Being re-enslaved was worse than death.
Jermaine (1:00:11)
If you look at the record, that is how a lot of people describe it as well. They describe it as hell. You know, these are the people who lived it, right? And you think about the biblical definition of hell, right? There's fire, there's brimstone, there's gnashing of teeth. I mean, and these are a lot of spiritual people, right? Who might have had some conception of the biblical hell, right? And they're saying, well, yeah, slavery, it's worse than that, right? So, you know, these are the stories, these are their stories, right? These are their words. These are their lives that were lived. And uh,
Edda Fields-Black (1:00:19)
Mm-hmm.
Jermaine (1:00:40)
yet to go there and stand there and have a connection to that history. I'm sure it enriches the book in ways that really can't even be described, right? It just, I'm sure it brings the stories to life in a way because, you know, that feeling I believe is transferred to the page. So I think readers are going to be moved by your book. I think the story is riveting. I think your personal connection is profound. And...
It's been an absolute honor to have you in conversation today. And I implore everyone to go out and get the book because as you've heard here, it's more than just a work of historical scholarship. It's a beautiful contribution to a pivotal chapter in American history, not only of the story of Harriet Tubman, but all those lives that are connected to this history. So Dr. Fields, Black Eye, appreciate you coming on the podcast. Thank you so much for sharing your stories with us.
Edda Fields-Black (1:01:35)
Thank you. Thank you so much for having me and thank you for all of the work that you've done.
Jermaine (1:01:41)
Thank you so much, I appreciate it.