Expertise

Topics:  Higher Education, Slave Trade, History, African History, Rice Farmers

Industries: Education/Learning, Writing and Editing, Research

Dr. Fields-Black is a specialist in the trans-national of West African rice farmers, peasant farmers in pre-colonial Upper Guinea Coast and enslaved laborers on rice plantations in the South Carolina and Georgia Lowcountry during the antebellum period.

Fields-Black’s first monograph Deep Roots: Rice Farmers in West Africa and the African Diaspora (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2014 paperback, 2008 cloth) uses a unique blend of interdisciplinary sources and methods to chronicle the development of tidal rice-growing technology by the inhabitants of the West African Rice Coast region, the region where the majority of captives disembarking in South Carolina and Georgia originated. By integrating linguistic evidence, biological and botanical studies of mangrove ecosystems, oral traditions, and travelers’ accounts from the first European traders to visit the coastal region, Deep Roots reconstructs a historical period pre-dating the first written sources for the region and beginning more than a millennium before the trans-Atlantic slave trade when both West African rice and rice farmers became important commodities. This important study is the first to apply the comparative method of historical linguistics to the Atlantic languages of West Africa’s coast. The narrative reveals the development of highly specialized and intensely localized agricultural technology and identities indigenous to West Africa’s coastal littoral. It presents a rare picture of dynamic early coastal West African societies, challenging Africanists’ assumptions that rice-growing technology diffused from the interior to the coast. A picture of a dynamic, diverse, highly specialized and localized pre-colonial Africa also stands in sharp contrast to Americanists’ constructions of a static, undifferentiated pre-modern Africa which acted as the progenitor of cultures in the African Diaspora. Deep Roots builds on the underlying premise of the comparative method of historical linguistics—inheritance, innovation, and borrowing—to fashion a theory of cultural change which is sufficiently open and elastic to encompass the diversity of communities, cultures, and forms of expression in Africa and the African Diaspora.

Media Experience

In researching her Pulitzer-winning book, CMU’s Fields-Black discovered a family connection  — Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
“I began thinking that I could reconstruct this enslaved community and I could achieve my goal of telling the story of the raid through their voices,” said Professor Edda Fields-Black (Dietrich College). Her book “COMBEE: Harriet Tubman, the Combahee River Raid, and Black Freedom During the Civil War” has been named a 2025 Pulitzer Prize Winner in History

Pulitzer Prizes 2025: A Guide to the Winning Books and Finalists  — The New York Times
Professor Edda Fields-Black's (Dietrich College) book “COMBEE: Harriet Tubman, the Combahee River Raid, and Black Freedom During the Civil War” has been named a 2025 Pulitzer Prize Winner in History.

NEH Fellowship Supports Slate’s Research on Civil Rights  — Carnegie Mellon University News
Slate noted that Carnegie Mellon’s History Department has special strength in African American history. He highlighted the pioneering scholarship of Joe W. Trotter Jr.(opens in new window), Giant Eagle University Professor of History and Social Justice; Associate Professor Edda Fields-Black(opens in new window); and Assistant Professor Ezelle Sanford III(opens in new window). "I am grateful to be working alongside Joe, Edda and Ezelle," Slate said, "and in a department where many scholars grapple with questions of race and social change."

National scholars to headline Stono Rebellion conference  — Charleston City Paper
Dr. Edda Fields-Black, author of the forthcoming book, Combee: Harriet Tubman, the Combahee River Raid, and Black Freedom during the Civil War, will take the stage at 5:30 p.m. Sept. 8 in the Rita Hollings Center. Fields-Black will discuss the region’s lucrative antebellum rice culture, Harriet Tubman, and the Combahee River Raid. Tubman served as a guide for the Union Navy during the raid. Fields-Black is an associate professor at Carnegie Mellon University in the Department of History. She has written numerous scholarly studies on the trans-national history of West African rice farmers.

Why Video Games Education Needs Harriet Tubman  — Ms. Magazine
What’s Harriet Tubman got to do with video games? While this pairing may seem strange, as game design educators we found impact in bridging these two subjects in our own classroom. Centering Tubman in our course has helped in our ongoing project to develop feminist and anti-racist game design education.

South Carolina’s Black Majority (1708-1920)  — BLACKPAST
By 1708 South Carolina became the first British North American colony to have an African American majority. The first Africans to arrive in South Carolina likely came in 1526 as part of the San Miguel de Gualdape Colony organized and sponsored by Spain. When the colonial settlement failed, those Africans joined and became absorbed into the Native American population.

'Farming While Black': A Guide To Finding Power And Dignity Through Food  — NPR
Edda Fields-Black, an associate professor of history at Carnegie Mellon University, studies the history of West African rice farmers. She says the rice industry in South Carolina and Georgia would not have been possible without West African techniques of irrigation so that the rice fields have a good balance of salt water and fresh water to stop weeds from growing and keep the rice alive.