Combee

Harriet Tubman, the Combahee River Raid, and Black Freedom During the Civil War

by Edda L. Fields-Black

Joint winner of the 2025 Pulitzer Prize for History. Edda L. Fields-Black tells the story of the June 1863 raid in which Harriet Tubman guided Union gunboats up South Carolina's Combahee River and 756 enslaved people freed themselves in a single day. A descendant of one of the soldiers, she rebuilds the lives of the people who escaped.