Carnegie Mellon Professor Wins 2025 Pulitzer Prize in History

Edda Fields-Black has received a coveted Pulitzer Prize for her book recounting a rebellion led by Harriet Tubman that freed 756 enslaved people

Edda Fields-Black is a Carnegie Mellon University historian, author, librettist and — now — a Pulitzer Prize winner.

Fields-Black’s book “COMBEE: Harriet Tubman, the Combahee River Raid and Black Freedom during the Civil War,” was selected as a 2025 Pulitzer Prize winner in history. The prize, shared this year with “Native Nations: A Millennium in North America” by Kathleen DuVal, is annually awarded to a “distinguished and appropriately documented book on the history of the United States.”

“COMBEE,” is the culmination of years’ worth of research conducted by the historian, who’s a professor in Dietrich College of Humanities and Social Sciences’ Department of History and director of The Humanities Center at CMU.

“I am truly grateful to the Pulitzer board for recognizing the Combahee River Raid and Harriet Tubman, the Second South Carolina Volunteers and the Combahee freedom seekers' quest for freedom as a significant chapter in our nation's history,” said Fields-Black. “I am humbled to bring the untold stories and unheard voices of formerly enslaved people to life. Thank you to the museums, research centers, archives, National Park Service, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, descendants of Harriet Tubman, the Combahee freedom seekers and planters, current Combahee River landowners and the entire team at OUP for partnering with me in making ‘COMBEE’ possible.” 

Tubman was instrumental in the success of the Combahee River Raid, the largest rebellion of enslaved people in U.S. history, which was based on intelligence she gathered as a Civil War spy for the U.S. Army Department of the South. Published in 2024, the book recounts the story from the perspectives of Tubman and the previously enslaved people who liberated themselves in the raid. Fields-Black herself is a descendant of one of the participants of the raid.

Dr. Fields-Black is unfailing in her commitment to uncovering and exploring layers of our past that are deeply significant to our nation. She is also unmatched in her ability to make this scholarship accessible and compelling to others,” said CMU President Farnam Jahanian. “On behalf of the Carnegie Mellon community, we are thrilled to see her talents and hard work recognized with this prestigious award and join the rest of the world in celebrating her success.

This spring, Fields-Black also received the 2025 Gilder Lehrman Lincoln Prize, which is awarded annually for exceptional scholarly work in English on Abraham Lincoln, the American Civil War soldier or the American Civil War era.

“Edda Fields-Black has intellectual ambition, artistic creativity, the courage to be truly interdisciplinary, and she is an extremely nice person! I am thrilled that her groundbreaking work on Harriet Tubman's role in the Lowcountry has been recognized for the seminal work it is,” said Richard Scheines, Bess Family Dean of Dietrich College.

Pittsburgh Arts & Lectures celebrated the launch of “COMBEE” in March 2024.

“The moment that I read ‘COMBEE,’ I knew it would go on to win all the prestigious awards, but I also knew that the standard of history writing had been raised,” said Sony Ton-Aime, executive director of Pittsburgh Arts & Lectures and an advisory board member for The Humanities Center at CMU. “Every future history book will need to borrow something from ‘COMBEE’ to be considered as worthwhile, and that is a deeper care for the voices of those whose history it tells.”

Fields-Black on Tubman and “COMBEE”

In addition to being one of your professional research interests, you have personally felt the ripple effect of Tubman’s work and legacy, as you discussed in an op-ed in the New York Times. Can you discuss your motivation for writing this book and how it feels to see your efforts come to fruition?

As I was pondering whether or not I could write a book about the Combahee River Raid, I happened upon the US Civil War Pension files while conducting genealogical research about my father’s family. In them, I found a treasure trove of information about my own family members and the community with whom they were held in bondage during the antebellum period a few miles from where the raid took place. The voices (i.e. testimony) of formerly enslaved people resided in this little-tapped source. So, searching for my ancestors’ pension files, I identified the two Second South Carolina companies formed of Combahee men who liberated themselves in the raid. And, I began to think I could identify the people who escaped in the raid, reconstruct their lives in bondage and freedom, and tell the story of the raid from the freedom seekers’ perspectives.

How is receiving a Pulitzer Prize in History a fitting tribute to Tubman’s legacy and her role in American history?

Most Americans know of Tubman as the most famous conductor on the Underground Railroad who liberated herself from bondage, then went back 13 times to bring approximately 70 enslaved people to freedom, gave detailed instructions to another 70 bonds people who liberated themselves, then became a suffragist after the Civil War.

In 2025, it is hard for Americans to fathom Harriet Tubman’s courage and selflessness, going back into what I call the “Prison House of Bondage” so many times to rescue family, friends and members of her community on the Maryland Eastern shore when she could have led a relatively comfortable life as a free woman in Philadelphia, St. Catherines, Canada or Auburn, New York. Then, during the Civil War, she risked her freedom and her life to go down to Beaufort, South Carolina, and rescue enslaved people she did not know, and (as she told to her biographers) whose dialect and culture she could not understand. Risking her freedom and her life so that other enslaved people could be free was a supreme act of bravery.

And, prior to the release of “COMBEE,” Tubman’s Civil War service — as a spy for the U.S. Army — was the least-known chapter of her extraordinary life. I set out to change this by documenting the Combahee River Raid and Tubman’s Civil War service and telling the story of the raid from the perspectives of the people who liberated themselves in, fought in and were impacted by it. It’s wonderful that more people are learning about Tubman’s leadership and selfless courage during the Combahee River Raid in which 756 enslaved were liberated on June 2, 1863 by Tubman, her ring of spies, scouts and pilots, Col. James Montgomery, the Second South Carolina Volunteers (300 Black soldiers) and the Third Rhode Island Heavy Artillery (one battery of white soldiers).

Since I happened upon Harriet Tubman in my rice fields along Lowcountry South Carolina’s Combahee River, I have joined with Harriet Tubman’s descendants and the many biographers, historians and artists working proudly to preserve Tubman’s legacy. I hope “COMBEE” winning the Pulitzer Prize will help secure the legacy of Tubman’s valorous Civil War service in the South Carolina Lowcountry.

What lessons can we learn from Harriet Tubman’s story and her contributions to the fight for freedom and equality in the United States?

The fight for freedom and equality continues today with no end in sight, unfortunately. We can learn from Harriet Tubman not to leave anyone behind in the fight, even if it means sacrificing our comfort and risking our lives.