From staff reports
In celebration of Black History Month, Pulitzer-Prize-winning historian and author Edda L. Fields-Black will present a public lecture on the civil rights icon Harriet Tubman’s role during the Civil War at 5 p.m., Tuesday, Feb. 24, at the University Downtown Center, 67 Washington St., Binghamton. This event is free and open to the public.
Fields-Black, professor of history and director of the Dietrich College Humanities Center at Carnegie Mellon University, will discuss Tubman’s often-neglected involvement in the Civil War, particularly her role in the June 1863 Combahee River Raid, where she helped liberate more than 700 people from rice plantations in South Carolina.
A descendant of one of the formerly enslaved men who fought in the raid herself, Fields-Black won the 2025 Pulitzer Prize in History and the 2025 Gilder Lehrman Lincoln Prize for a book highlighting this chapter in Tubman’s life: COMBEE: Harriet Tubman, the Combahee River Raid, and Black Freedom during the Civil War.
This event is presented by the Harriet Tubman Center for Freedom and Equity at Binghamton University in partnership with the Department of History, Provost’s Office, Harpur College Dean’s Office, Division of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion, and Decker College of Nursing and Health Sciences.
For more information, contact Anne Bailey, director of the Tubman Center, at abailey@binghamton.edu.