Edda L. Fields-Black
Associate Professor Carnegie Mellon University
- Pittsburgh PA
Dr. Fields-Black is a specialist in the trans-national of West African farmers and enslaved laborers on rice plantations.
Biography
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.
Areas of Expertise
Media Appearances
In researching her Pulitzer-winning book, CMU’s Fields-Black discovered a family connection
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette online
2025-05-06
“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 online
2025-05-05
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 online
2023-02-23
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 online
2022-08-29
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 online
2022-02-22
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 online
2022-01-23
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 online
2018-11-10
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.
Media
Social
Industry Expertise
Accomplishments
Choice Outstanding Academic Title
2015
New Directions Fellowship
Andrew W. Mellon Foundation
2013
Smithsonian Senior Fellowship
2013
Smithsonian Museum of American History
Education
University of Florida
M.A.
History
1995
University of Pennsylvania
Ph.D.
History
2001
Emory University
B.A.
English/History
1992
Links
Articles
Mapping Antebellum Rice Fields as a Basis for Understanding Human and Ecological Consequences of the Era of Slavery
Land2021
Model systems enlightened by history that provide understanding and inform contemporary and future landscapes are needed. Through transdisciplinary collaboration, historic rice fields of the southeastern United States can be such models, providing insight into how human–ecological systems work. Rice culture in the United States began in the 1670s; was primarily successfully developed, managed, and driven by the labor of enslaved persons; and ended with the U.S. Civil War.
Roundtable: Why Does Agricultural History Matter?
Agricultural History2019
The roundtable had its genesis as a session at the 2019 annual conference of the AHS in Washington, DC, which featured Peter A. Coclanis, Greta de Jong, Dolly Jørgensen, Alan I Marcus, Amrys O. Williams (represented by Kellen Backer), and Catharine Anne Wilson (represented by Jodey Nurse-Gupta), and lively audience discussion.
In the Shadow of Slavery: Africa's Botanical Legacy in the Atlantic World Get
Journal of American History2011
Since the publication of David Eltis, Philip Morgan, and David Richardson's “Agency and Diaspora in Atlantic History: Reassessing the African Contribution to Rice Cultivation in the Americas,” in the American Historical Review (Dec. 2007, pp. 1329–58), the historiographical pendulum has swung against African agency. As with all good historical debates, new research keeps the pendulum in motion. In the Shadow of Slavery by Judith A. Carney and Richard Nicholas Rosomoff argues that African plants and animals are virtually invisible in the Columbian exchange literature.
