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

Recommended by Cornell William Brooks, Hauser Professor of the Practice of Nonprofit Organizations and Professor of the Practice of Public Leadership and Social Justice, Harvard Kennedy School

My reading list includes the Pulitzer Prize-winning and monumentally important book “Combee: Harriet Tubman, the Combahee River, and Black Freedom During the Civil War” by Edda L. Fields-Black. The book describes the Union Army raid liberating at least 750 enslaved people in the Low Country of South Carolina, bravely led by Harriet Tubman. The book features my fourth great-grandfather Jack Wineglass, who was liberated as a young teenager and joined the Union army to defeat the Confederacy. It is among the books that inspires my work, teaching advocacy. It is less about formal study than moral meditation on the work we do with our students.