10-05-2025
Miami native, daughter of Black historian wins Pulitzer for history
Armed with a list of questions on a legal pad and a tape recorder, Edda Fields-Black and her older sister went from house to house in Brownsville recording her family's history – a task she was paid to do by her mom, historian Dorothy Jenkins Fields.
The Miami native was about 8 years old at the time, but this task planted the seeds of curiosity about history —particularly family history— that she credits her mom with instilling in her.
Being raised by a historian led her to follow her mother's footsteps. Fields-Black is now a professor of history at Carnegie Mellon University and director of the school's Dietrich College Humanities Center and author of two books, the second of which just won a Pulitzer Prize for history.
On Monday, it was announced that Fields-Black won the Pulitzer for her book 'COMBEE: Harriet Tubman, the Combahee River Raid, and Black Freedom during the Civil War,' which used historic first-hand accounts to detail how Tubman, who enlisted the help of the 2nd South Carolina Volunteer Infantry Regiment, was instrumental in what Fields-Black called the largest slave rebellion in U.S. history.
Fields-Black is still processing her win, having received more phone calls and emails than she can count, but one thing she said is for certain, the win is for 'our ancestors.'
'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 told the Miami Herald days after her win. Fields-Black is one of two Black people who has won the Pulitzer Prize for history, with author Annette Gordon-Reed being the other.
None are more excited than her mother, Jenkins Fields, founder of Miami's Black Archives, an organization committed to preserving the history of people of African descent in South Florida, who told the Herald that her daughter's achievements 'are a testament to her strength and perseverance. Her hard work and dedication paid off, and I couldn't be more proud.'
Her win comes at a time when restrictions have been imposed on how Black history has been taught statewide and nationally, and there have been threats of cutting funding to entities whose work serves Black communities or preserves Black history.
Telling the story of the Combahee River Raid, which took place from June 1-3 in 1863, took Fields-Black 10 years to research and three years to write. Fields-Black recounts the events using Civil War pension files to identify the enslaved men who participated in the raid— files she also used when tracking her own family history. The files contained first-hand accounts from enslaved people about the raid.
Fields-Black got the idea to tell this story after stumbling upon the Combahee River Raid in her research for another project. She came across the name Linus Hamilton, an 88-year-old man who told his life story a few weeks after the raid, and told what happened to him and his wife on the morning of the raid.
'It is such an extraordinary story and historical document,' she 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.'
She eventually realized his story was a piece in a 'much larger puzzle,' and came in handy when she researched and wrote about the Combahee River Raids. '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 said.
Her mission became to identify the rice plantations where the raids took place and the people who Tubman helped liberate. 'Could I identify them? Could I tell the story of the raid from their perspectives, knowing full well that as a historian, this had never been done before — to identify individual enslaved people on a plantation or a set of plantations, and then to be able to hear their voices and tell their stories from those voices?' she said. 'I knew it hadn't been done before, but because I had found Linus Hamilton, I thought I could do it.'
Fields-Black also had to use digitized archives in her research, including a collection from History Miami that focused on Col. James Montgomery, a white commander with the 2nd South Carolina Volunteer Infantry, the Black regiment that conducted the raid.
Ultimately, Fields-Black wants people to take away two things from her work: Tubman's civil war service and leadership in the Combahee River Raid (she is part of a team working to get Tubman a medal of honor) and that civil war pension files are key in connecting Black people to their ancestors.
Jenkins Field told the Herald that she is particularly proud of how her daughter's work has shown 'that once-difficult-to-access records are now digitized giving African American families opportunities to recover more of our lost past.'
Understanding how to access and research Black history will help future scholars, and Fields-Black said she wants to see more Black Pulitzer winners in the field of history.
'I feel like I'm standing on a lot of people's shoulders,' she said, 'and a lot of people have sacrificed and invested and prayed so that I can be here today to not only represent our ancestors and all of their experiences, but then to open the doors for others.'
