Edda Fields-Black gives a keynote speech for Juneteenth at Carnegie Mellon University in 2024. (Carnegie Mellon University)
COLUMBIA, S.C. – Edda Fields-Black was working on a book about rice plantations when she came across the story of a raid in Beaufort that freed more than 700 slaves from Lowcountry plantations.
The Carnegie Mellon University professor decided to pursue the story and, nearly a decade later, published “COMBEE: Harriet Tubman, the Combahee River Raid, and Black Freedom During the Civil War,” which recently won the Pulitzer Prize for history…