2024 Juneteenth Keynote Lecture with Dr. Edda Fields-Black: "Fighting for Freedom: Harriet Tubman, the Combahee River Raid and the Civil War"

Tuesday, June 18, noon to 1 p.m., Simmons Auditorium B, Tepper Building 

Dr. Edda L. Fields-Black is an associate professor of history in CMU’s Dietrich College of Humanities and Social Sciences and a specialist in the transnational histories of West African rice farmers, the African diaspora and enslaved laborers on Lowcountry rice plantations. A direct descendant of an enslaved man who escaped during the Civil War, she has traced her ancestry to rice plantations in South Carolina and West Africa. Her new book, “COMBEE: Harriet Tubman, the Combahee River Raid, and Black Freedom during the Civil War,” provides a detailed account of the Combahee River Raid, one of Harriet Tubman's most extraordinary accomplishments, based on original documents and written by a descendant of one of the participants.

Her Juneteenth lecture will explore how Tubman, the intelligence she gathered, and her ring of spies, scouts, and pilots played a central war in the Combahee River Raid, one of the most dramatic episodes of the Civil War and the largest and most successful slave rebellion in U.S. history.

Learn more and register here.

Summer Mending Workshop

Friday, June 21, noon to 2 p.m., TechSpark Fab Lab C101, Hamerschlag Hall

TechSpark Makerspace staffer Katrina D'Arms is hosting weekly mending workshops in the TechSpark "Fab Lab" in Hamerschlag Hall.

On Friday afternoons from noon to 2 p.m. through the summer (May 31- Aug. 9), she is available to teach hand and machine sewing and help with repairs and simple alterations. Bring a damaged garment on accessory to repair - no experience necessary.