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COMBEE is based upon original research and offers the first full account of Tubman's Civil War service and the Combahee River Raid. In the process, it also offers the story of enslaved families living in bondage and fighting for their freedom, and does so using their own distinct and individual voices.
List of contents
- Prologue: The Voices We Have Not Heard
- Part I: The Prison House of Bondage
- Chapter 1: End of Importation
- Chapter 2: The Oldest Old Heads
- Chapter 3: An Economy in Transition
- Chapter 4: "Play Children Together"
- Chapter 5: Flight from Bondage
- Chapter 6: Swamp Reclamation
- Chapter 7: John Brown's Body
- Part II: The Proving Ground of Freedom
- Chapter 8: "Gunshoot at Bay Point"
- Chapter 9: "More Intelligence than Anyone Else"
- Chapter 10: Broken Promises
- Chapter 11: Just the Two of Us
- Chapter 12: "Ropes Around their Necks"
- Part III: The Combahee River Raid
- Chapter 13: "Make the Enemy Pay the Way"
- Chapter 14: "I Was Gwine to the Boat"
- Chapter 15: "Don't We Colored People Deserve Credit?"
- Part IV: "We's Combee"
- Chapter 16: Closing in on Charleston
- Chapter 17: "Lay my Bones in dat air Bush"
- Epilogue: Risking Everything for Black Freedom
About the author
Dr. Edda L. Fields-Black teaches history at Carnegie Mellon University and has written extensively about the history of West African rice farmers, including in such works as Deep Roots: Rice Farmers in West Africa and the African Diaspora. She was a co-editor of Rice: Global Networks and New Histories, which was selected as a Choice Outstanding Academic Title. Fields-Black has served as a consultant for the Smithsonian National Museum of African-American History and Culture's permanent exhibit, "Rice Fields of the Lowcountry." She is the executive producer and librettist of "Unburied, Unmourned, Unmarked: Requiem for Rice," a widely performed original contemporary classical work by celebrated composer John Wineglass.
Fields-Black is a descendent of Africans enslaved on rice plantations in Colleton County, South Carolina; her great-great-great grandfather fought in the Combahee River Raid in June 1863. Her determination to illuminate the riches of the Gullah dialect, and to reclaim
Gullah Geechee history and culture, has taken her to the rice fields of South Carolina and Georgia to those of Sierra Leone and Republic of Guinea in West Africa.
Summary
COMBEE is based upon original research and offers the first full account of Tubman's Civil War service and the Combahee River Raid. In the process, it also offers the story of enslaved families living in bondage and fighting for their freedom, and does so using their own distinct and individual voices.
Additional text
Elegantly written, this thick volume is supported by 15 appendixes that include the names of liberated bondmen, the names of Tubman's scouts, military orders, correspondence by both white and Black participants, and 151 pages of endnotes.
