From Archives to Narrative: Edda Fields-Black on Writing Combee

How do you write history about people who were never meant to leave records behind?Pulitzer Prize historian Edda Fields-Black explains the research behind Combee.Edda Fields-Black’s Combee uncovers the lives of enslaved people through extraordinary archival work, linguistic skill, and historical detective work. But how do you write history about people who were rarely allowed to leave records behind?In this full conversation, Edda explains not just the story of Combee, but the research process behind it: working across archives, reading against the grain of plantation records, tracing names, landscapes, and languages, and reconstructing lives that history tried to erase.This is a deep look at how serious historical scholarship happens—and how patient, creative research can recover voices from the past.Hashtags#EddaFieldsBlack #Combee #PulitzerPrize #HistoryResearch #Archives #SlaveryHistory #HistoricalMethod #BlackHistory #UndergroundRailroad #Historiography KeywordsEdda Fields-Black interview, Combee book, Pulitzer history book, how historians do research, researching slavery archives, reading plantation records, historical methodology, writing history of enslaved people, archival research process, Black history scholarship, historiography interview, Underground Railroad scholarship, recovering lost voices in history, historian research workflow, primary sources slavery history