Edda Fields-Black: The Harriet Tubman you didn’t know

I'm Alan Olga and this is Clear and Vivid. Conversations about connecting and communicating.

It was 4 a.m. when the enslaved people first sensed that something was happening. At that

time on the country river you can't see your hand in front of your face yet they were in the

rice fields hoeing rice and they were enslaved people in the still in the slave cabins and we know

from a letter that Tubman's nephew wrote in the 1930s that she actually went to the slave cabins

and this is where the most vulnerable people would have been, very elderly people,

young mothers with infants, she went to the cabins and made sure that those people got out.

Everybody running, you know everybody running for their lives.

That's Edda Fields Black. Her Pulitzer Prize winning book, Cumbi, tells the remarkable and little

known story of how in 1863 Harriet Tubman played a critical role in a daring raid that freed

over 700 enslaved people from rice plantations along South Carolina's Cumbi River.

By delving into overlooked sources such as Civil War pension records she's woven a vivid

account of the raid that freed the plantation workers and their families as well as discovering

that her own great great great grandfather was with Harriet Tubman in the gunboat that led the raid.

Congratulations on this monumental work and on the Pulitzer Prize it earned, that's just

it's so great. Thank you thank you so much. You know I'm among those people who knew Harriet Tubman

for her work in the underground railway but I didn't know the story of the Cumbi River raid

and her role in it which was so amazing. Well Harriet Tubman was the commander of a group of

spy scouts and pilots so this was eight or nine men who were formerly enslaved and from the region

from the Buford and Sea Island, South Carolina Sea Island region. She was sent down to Buford

to be a spy for the U.S. Army arriving around May of 1862 and joined a group of abolitionists,

generals you could call them, generals who were part of the abolition

networks that she became a part of after she liberates herself in 1849 and she's on the underground

railroad. Was this common for people who managed to escape and slavement to go back

and help more people get out because they returned to their so-called owners or they'd be hung

right? Harriet Tubman was not the only person to do this. There were less people whose names are

lost to history. We know that there were others who went back into slavery after freeing themselves

to free other people, often family members, but Tubman went back 13 times. So I think that's a record.

I don't know that there's another individual who went back so many times and risked her life,

risked her freedom for the freedom of other people. How old was she around the time she was doing this?

She's born in 1822 so she would have been about, she would have escaped when she was around 27.

So late 20s early 30s and then 40 years old when she arrives in Bufert.

How did the raid come about in the first place? Who got this started?

I'm pretty sure that it was General David Hunter who gave the orders, but I'm also pretty

sure that it's that General Hunter got the intelligence where the raid should take place that there

were still enslaved people on these plantations. And I say that because the Confederate army had

ordered the planters and slaveholders to evacuate these rivers because they couldn't protect them,

right? So to know that on this stretch of the river, the planters had not evacuated,

that they were still exploiting the labor of enslaved people to grow rice. To know that June

is the sickly season, which meant that in a typical year, the slaveholders and overseers would leave

by mid-May and not come back until after the first hard frost in November around Thanksgiving.

So they didn't actually live on these plantations for about five or six months out of the year.

So striking in June meant in a typical year, there'd be nobody but black people on the river.

No one but slaves and even the Confederate army had reassigned its troops. So Hunter gave the order,

but it was based on this intelligence, which came from Harriet Tubman.

And your account from the point of view of the people escaping is memorable. That's because it's

so full of human details. Like I'll never forget the description of Harriet Tubman tearing her

clothes, one bushes and things like that, trying to rush people to the to the robots to get them

to the larger boats. And the women with twins around their neck and another woman with pigs,

two pigs, one I forget the name Beauregard and the other one Jefferson Davis,

that's the name he had. Yes. And both of those pigs were eaten by the way.

What comes to mind as you mind ranges over the events of that day? What was it really like?

It was dark. It was 4 a.m. when the enslaved people first sensed that something was happening.

At that time on the Cumber River, you can't see your hand in front of your face,

yet they were in the rice fields, hoeing rice. At 4 a.m. At 4 a.m. And first probably felt the

vibrations of the steamships and then smelled the smoke and then heard the whistles and then saw

the boats. There are also people who were not in the rice fields, but enslaved people who were

forced to labor in the house. So some word had to be gotten to them for them to come to the boats.

And they were enslaved people in the still in the slave cabins. And we know from a letter that

Tubman's nephew wrote in the 1930s that she actually went to the slave cabins. And this is where

the most vulnerable people would have been everybody who couldn't work, right? Very elderly people

disabled, informed, maybe young children, young mothers with infants, and women who had recently

given birth, she went to the cabins and made sure that those people got out and came to the boat.

And then, as you've mentioned, this really funny and chaotic scene in Su's where she talks about,

helping women carry their children. And one woman has a rice pot on her head and a child sitting

on her shoulders and the child's digging out of the rice pot, eating in flight. And the pot

is smoking. She talks about women with their twins, young, young twins hanging onto their skirts.

And the two pigs, right? Boregard and Davis. And just everybody running, you know, everybody

running for their lives. And soldiers, the second South Carolina volunteer soldiers walking up and

down the river banks, waving flags and ringing bells and trying to get the attention of freedom

seekers, particularly those who were in more distant rice fields. And on the plantations that are

further from the river, where the robots landed, people trying to pile onto these robots.

And people who couldn't get on the boat, holding on and trying to stop the boats from leaving without

them. We know that on one plantation, this would have been Bonnie Hall. Once the Confederate

reinforcements arrive, there was an overseer on that plantation. He is able to get a handful of

Confederate soldiers to accompany him back to the plantation. And the overseer and the soldiers

position themselves between the freedom seekers and the boat. And that stops a good number of people

from actually getting to freedom. And one girl, we don't know how old she was, but it says she's a girl.

So I'm assuming she had not hit puberty yet. She actually ran for the boat. And the overseer shot

her in cold blood and killed her. And she was the only casualty on the union side,

on the side of the freedom seekers in the Cumber River Raid.

You have such vivid descriptions, detailed descriptions of the raid from the point of view

of the union and the formerly enslaved people. How did you get the points of view of the Confederate

side of the day? The Confederate army was really caught. One could say asleep at the switch. And

they had to explain themselves. How could they allow the union in three little rag tag boats

to get up this river and onto the private property of Confederate citizens burning down seven

plantations burned to the ground hundreds to a couple thousand acres with many multiple

outbuildings. So stables, the manor house barns full of rice burned horses livestock taken.

So there's a lot of butt covering in the Confederate record from the from the commanders down to

some enlisted men. And they're talking, they're telling, you know, what was my position?

This was my order. And this is why it's not my fault, right? It was not my fault, but this happened.

And there were some court marshals, right? The lower ranked, some of the lower ranked officers do

get court marshalled for not, you know, being where they were supposed to be or doing what they

were supposed to do. But the top, then nothing happens to them.

Passages in the book made clear to me in a way I never thought of before that the people who

were enslaved, many of whom were being rescued that day, came from different parts of Africa

and didn't speak the same language and getting them out must not have been as easy as it sounds

and it sounds very difficult. You know, the coastal South Carolina and Georgia rice plantations

were the area in the country, one of them that continued to import enslaved people

really up until the Civil War or right before the Civil War. So you did have people on the

plantations who were African born. And in other parts of the US South, of course, the slave trade

ended in 1808. But the demand for labor and the low life expectancy on rice plantations meant

that they constantly needed to renew the labor. Most people would have been born in the South

and spoke the gulla dialect. It would still have been difficult. And I talk a little bit about in

the book about how people communicated, right? How people kept in touch just thinking and documenting

the slave transactions and that people who were on different plantations in June of 1863

may have actually grown up together on another plantation, right? And then been sold away to

different plantations or they were on a plantation together. People and some got mortgage or

a family, right? The will get settled and the grandchildren or the children or whomever inherits.

And so that splits up the enslaved families because different families and slave families are

inherited by different slave holding families. So there are a lot of ways that people were very

connected, even though physically they were a part, but they were also able to see each other,

right? Whether it was going to church together or connecting after they had finished their

task, which is their work for the day, people were still very much connected. How did they manage

to communicate in spite of differences in dialect? I think that by 1863 there was a common dialect

was developing. And so people may have still spoken in African language, but I would say that most

of them would have spoken the gulla dialect. I think there were more than 700 people who

escaped that day. What happened to them later? What became of their lives? Do we know?

Yeah, so 756 people were liberated in the raid. They arrived the morning of June 3rd, 1863,

back at the Wharf in downtown Buford. And they paraded down the main street in Buford.

And everyone really came out to see them, people who had been liberated as early as November of 1861.

They were taken to a church, which is today Tabernacle Baptist Church, and they were

sort of sorted, if you will, to find out who needed medical care, who needed food,

the able-bodied men were taken and examined. And 150 men aged 14 to 70

joined the Second South Carolina Volunteers that morning. The women, the children,

the disabled, elderly, and firm men, they were all taken to a refugee camp.

And there they went to school. They worked on the island cotton fields and other kinds of

labors. And they reunited their families. As men became disabled and discharged from the

military, they would go back to the refugee camp and join their families.

The younger, stronger, healthier men continued to serve. And they were in a number of

engagements until February 28th of 1866, when they were discharged, when they were mustard out.

Was there any effort on the part of the former slave owners to get their possessions back,

and the possessions in the form of humanity? Did they make legal attempts to do it?

No, the attempts they made were immediately following the raid. They sent the bloodhounds

out to the Cumbi to try to find people who were hiding and who were left behind.

Four of the planters actually filed for compensation from the Confederate government,

and they created these documents where they list the names of all of the people they lost.

This is one of the ways that I recover the names of the people who were liberated in the

Cumbi River raid. Some of your ancestors were actually involved in the raid, I think. Is that correct?

Yes. In the course of my research, I learned that Hector Fields, who was my great, great, great

grandfather, fought in the raid. He was in the second South Carolina volunteers. His company was on

the lead gunboat with Harriet Tubman. When we come back from our break, Edda Fields Black

tells me how important it is to tell the stories of her own ancestors, and those of millions of

other Americans at a time when the current administration is attempting to deny that history.

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This is clear and vivid, and now back to my conversation with Edda Fields Black.

You know, in your book, you mentioned that you'd like to see the history of enslaved people

told in a different way, and I wondered if you meant at least in part when you wrote that,

that you wanted to see it in this visceral way that you experienced it.

It is visceral. I wanted to be visceral. It shouldn't be sanitized. I also really wanted to write

about enslaved people as humans, right? Not just this amorphous category that doesn't have names

and faces and families, and write about them as mothers and fathers and husbands and wives,

and sisters and brothers, aunties, uncles, cousins, sweethearts, best friends, and even baby

mamas. I wanted the full scope of humanity that I was able to see when I peered into the U.S.

Civil War pension files and heard enslaved people telling their stories of bondage and freedom.

And historians, we really had not heard this before. And I knew it was a vantage point

sort of appearing into the slave orders that we had not seen before.

I didn't know that there were these testimonials in the pension applications.

What was the purpose of that? Tell a story convincing enough that they would get my pension?

Was that the idea? Well, if you think about applying for government benefits, even today,

it requires a lot of paperwork, right? Black people in this rural part of South Carolina don't

have death certificates before 1950. What people did have is they had the people with whom they grew up,

and these folks would come out and they would tell their stories, and they would talk about their

relationships and how long they had known the veteran. They would talk about all the women he

dated, all the women he courted, including the ones, especially the ones he didn't marry, right?

I didn't know you could get a pension for that.

Well, they had to prove that the veteran and his wife were legally married.

Oh, I see. So all those other women he dated didn't count.

He courted this window and the other one. He even got this one pregnant, but he did not marry

he's only ever been married to this lady.

This is such a vivid story in your telling. This is our real history. Why do you think

people can make some people can make the assertion that it's un-American, it's unpatriotic

to tell ourselves a real history. What makes them want to get away with that? I don't get it.

Yeah. I don't get it either. I think that there are those who think talking about slavery is

divisive. I think they think it's unpatriotic. I could come up with any number of words that I've

heard over time. Of course, you must know that I know those people are wrong and that in every

country, there are hard histories, right? And there are difficult periods and there are things that

we may not want to remember, but they are actually part and parcel of that nation and how that

nation came to be. And I think that we can only really tell American history when we tell everyone's

story. And so that means the story of the slaveholders and the enslaved. It means the story of

the overseers, right? And so there's certainly class differences in each of those categories.

They're gender differences. They're differences of sexuality. They're all kinds of differences.

And we only get the full picture when the full picture, which is a very rich picture,

when we can tell everybody's story. Now, of course, some stories are easier to tell than others.

And I think if I'm going to be generous, I will say that maybe the reason why the story has

been told by only in this case, the story of the slave owners, well, they left written records,

right? And so that's what historians look at. That's what historians analyze. And I think across

the board, when you look at class and you look at race and you look at gender, it's people who

lower class and working class and no class people who couldn't write and read that hard to get

their stories told. It's hard to get their side of the story, but we have to keep looking and we

have to keep trying and we have to find ways where these folks show up because they do show up,

right? And unless we look for them and find them and listen to them, we're not telling the whole

story. Well, you've certainly done a magnificent job in tracking down the real story of a full or

more nourishing story because it's so full of truths and vividly so. Thank you. So thank you so

much. Before we end our conversation, we always end the show with seven quick questions. I hope

you game. Okay. Help us know you a little better. Okay. First question of all the things there are

to understand, what do you wish you really understood? I love these pauses. This is the best part

of it. Sounds like you're really, you're really digging deep. I'm really searching here. There are

those of us who think and we are. We're having difficult times right now. I wish I understood how

my ancestors got over how they made it through. How do they keep going? Of course, without them,

I would, if they hadn't done so, if they hadn't been able to do so, I wouldn't be sitting here today.

And I think that we can always draw on their struggles. And I think if we knew more about how they

did it, number one, we would have more, we'd have more respect. But number two, we would also know that

we can get through this also. We have the tools, we have the strength, we have the resilience,

we have what we need to get through. If they can do it, then we've got to be able to do it also.

Good second question. How do you tell someone they have their facts wrong?

It depends on the person and it depends on how they are presenting themselves.

I might just tell them, you know, that's not it. This is what it is.

And if they want to challenge me about my facts, then I tell them, why don't we meet in the park?

And you bring your Pulitzer Prize and I'll bring mine and we can have a play day.

That's very funny. Okay, third question.

What's the strangest question anyone has ever asked you?

I was warned about this and I prepared, but sometimes, you know, you have a bad day. I have had

people at book events, Civil War enthusiasts who want to argue about guns, and about the type of

gun and the caliber of gun. Oh, all right. Yeah. To me, that's a strange question and I can,

I can only go so far. Compared to human interest stories like the ones you tell,

caliber guns, it sounds secondary. Did you read the book?

Now, here's one. Here's one. Number four. How do you deal with a compulsive talker?

I stand up and I sometimes you have to put your hand on someone's shoulder if they don't know

that their time is up and they just continue to, you know, jabber. I stand up and I kind of move

closer to them and I put my hand, you know, on their shoulder. That's a good, good technique.

Yeah. Let's say you're sitting at a dinner party and you're next to someone you've never met before.

How do you begin a genuine conversation? If I've never met the person, I probably would ask them,

so how do you know the host? Or if we're there for an organization, so what is your relationship to

this organization? Or how did you become involved? Or something to get them to relate themselves

to the event and that usually opens people up and based on their response, then I can pull out

something. Well, my wife, you know, recommended whatever then we can find out more about the family.

Right? Or I used to work with so and so and I, you know, we worked together for 25 years and

I'm retired now. So now we can find out more about this person's work. What do they do in their

in their career and what are they doing in retirement? So I think typically I would ask a question,

a relational question. Okay. Next to last, what gives you confidence?

I would say that I feel like I found my mission and my mission is to tell the stories of enslaved

people, particularly people who were in bondage on low country, South Carolina and Georgia

rice plantations. There were there are stages in my career where I doubted that and I don't doubt it

anymore. I embrace it and I'm very confident that this is what I am supposed to do. This is my

calling, if you will, and I'm kind of good at it. And I enjoy it. That's the confidence

coming up. Yeah, that's great. Okay. Let last question. What book changed your life?

There are a lot that have changed it over time. Wow. I would probably say something by Tony

Morrison. I would probably say the bluest eye. Well, I think your book is going to change people's

lives. And I'm so grateful to meet you and to have you come on and talk about the book. Thanks

so much. Thank you. Thank you. I am so honored and excited to be here and have been a fan for

many, many decades of your work. And so thank you so much for inviting me. Well, I couldn't be

more honored myself. Thank you. This has been Clearing Vivid. At least I hope so. My thanks to the

sponsor of this podcast and to all of you who support our show on Patreon. You keep Clearing Vivid

up and running. And after we pay expenses, whatever is left over goes to the oldest center for

communicating science at Stony Brook University. So your support is contributing to the better

communication of science. We're very grateful. Edda Fields Black is professor of history at Carnegie

Mellon University. Her Pulitzer Prize winning book is Cumbi, Harriet Tubman, The Cumbi River Raid,

and Black Freedom during the Civil War. This episode was edited and produced by our executive

producer Graham Shed with help from our associate producer, Gene Schumay. Our publicist is Sarah Hill.

Our researcher is Elizabeth O'Haney and the sound engineer is Erica Huang. The music is courtesy

of the Stefan Kerneg Trio. Next in our series of conversations, I talk with Michael Pollan.

Best known for his writing on food and for his crisp summation of advice for healthy eating,

eat food, not too much, mainly plants. He's now taken a deep and very personal dive into the

mystery of consciousness. I spend a lot of my life not thinking much about consciousness.

It's kind of the water we swim in. On the other hand, it's this precious gift that we have this

interior space that nobody can touch if we don't want them to. We have these voices in our head.

It's an interesting place to go. The thing that has really changed is my recognition

of what a precious gift this is, and that we are less conscious than we can be,

and that we need some consciousness hygiene. Michael Pollan and the mystery and marvel of

consciousness. Next time on Clear and Vivid. For more details about Clear and Vivid and to

sign up for my newsletter, please visit allenolder.com. And you can also find us on Facebook and

Instagram at Clear and Vivid. Thanks for listening. Bye-bye.