by Mary plays
May 10, 2025
Edda Fields-Black won the prize for her book ‘COMBEE: Harriet Tubman, the Combahee River Raid, and Black Freedom during the Civil War.’
Edda Fields-Black was announced as the winner of a Pulitzer Prize for her book “COMBEE: Harriet Tubman, the Combahee River Raid, and Black Freedom during the Civil War.” For her work in history, Fields-Black accounted with first-hand records on how Tubman led what Fields-Black called the largest “slave rebellion in U.S history.”
Fields-Black was awarded the Pulitzer on May 5 in history. The prize, shared between Combee and “Native Nations: A Millennium in North America” by Kathleen DuVal. The pieces are described as “distinguished and appropriately documented books on the history of the United States.”
Fields-Black opened up to the Miami Herald about her win, describing getting more phone calls and emails with congratulations than she expected. However, the event feels monumental for Black historians.
Fields-Black told the outlet, “It’s a form of validation, almost, that these stories are important and that they must be told with the backing of the Pulitzer Prize, even under these very difficult circumstances.
She is just one of two women who have won the Pulitzer Prize in history, alongside the trailblazing author Annette Gordon-Reed.
Fields-Black’s Combahee book details the Combahee River Raid of 1863, and the Miami native historian spent 10 years researching and writing the book. Utilizing Civil War pension files to accurately identify the men involved in the raid, it was important to Fields-Black to tell the story with as many firsthand accounts as possible.
According to the Miami Herald, she began her journey researching the Combahee River Raid after learning about a man named Linus Hamilton.
Hamilton is an 88-year-old man who recounted what happened to him and his wife on the morning of the raid.
“It is such an extraordinary story and historical document,” Fields-Black said. “It is extremely rare to know an enslaved person’s name, first and last name. It’s extremely rare to hear their voice, and it’s almost unheard of to hear them tell in their own words how they felt at any point in their lives.”
“In reading the literature about the raid, I began to connect it to Linus Hamilton. It had not been connected before, and I began to think maybe there’s a story here that hasn’t been told.”
Fields-Black identified dozens of people that Harriet Tubman helped to liberate, and the rice plantations in which the raids took place.
Edda’s mother and founder of the Miami Black Archives, Jenkin Fields, is more excited than anyone else for her daughter.
Fields is no stranger to Black history work, as the founder of Miami’s Black Archives, she is committed to preserving the history of people of African descent who reside in South Florida. Fields told the Herald that (Fields-Black)’s achievements “are a testament to her strength and perseverance. Her hard work and dedication paid off, and I couldn’t be more proud.”
She continued, “Once-difficult-to-access records are now digitized,, giving African American families opportunities to recover more of our lost past.”
When Fields-Black’s Pulitzer Prize win comes at such a time when Black History is being policed in curricula, it is even more important to acknowledge the importance of her work.
Fields-Black told the Miami Herald that she just wants people to take away two things from her work on her book, and that is that Tubman was an integral part of the civil war leading the Combahee River Raids, and also that civil war pension files are a useful point of contact in connecting Black people to the stories of their ancestors.
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