I was lucky enough to visit the Gibbes Art Museum in Charleston last year and see the exhibition based on Dr. Edda Fields-Black‘s book about the raid and the larger struggle for Black freedom in the U.S.A.
This exhibition is inspired by the untold story of the Combahee River Raid from the perspective of Harriet Tubman and the enslaved people she helped to free that is revealed for the first time through groundbreaking research by Carnegie Mellon University historian, Edda Fields-Black, Ph.D., in her recent book COMBEE: Harriet Tubman, the Combahee River Raid, and Black Freedom during the Civil War. Working in collaboration with J Henry Fair, renowned environmental photographer, and guest curator, Vanessa Thaxton-Ward, Ph.D., Director of the Hampton University Museum, the exhibition carefully recreates the full journey of these brave soldiers and freedom seekers on that fateful moonlit night.
On June 2, 1863, Harriet Tubman led the largest and most successful slave rebellion in the United States when her group of spies, scouts, and pilots piloted Colonel James Montgomery, the Second South Carolina Volunteers (300 Black soldiers), and one battery of the Third Rhode Island Artillery up the lower Combahee. African Americans working in the rice fields on seven rice plantations along the Combahee heard the uninterrupted steam whistles of the two US Army gunboats and ran to freedom. 756 enslaved people liberated themselves in six hours, more than ten times the number of enslaved people Tubman rescued on the Underground Railroad. The morning after the raid, 150 men who liberated themselves in the Raid joined the Second South Carolina Volunteers and fought for the freedom of others through the end of the Civil War.
Visitors to the exhibition will explore this dramatic event through Fair’s dynamic contemporary and environmentally sensitive photographs and video works, as well as contemporary and historic art objects, and material culture. Some of the artists included in the show include Jacob Lawrence, Faith Ringgold, William H. Johnson, and Stephen Towns. The exhibition sheds new light on the history of Tubman, the environmental challenges faced by enslaved laborers as they sought a path to freedom, and the significance of the Lowcountry’s historic rice fields on modern-day coastal wetlands.
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