The Gibbes Museum, a key cultural hub in the American South since its founding in 1858, has announced the world premiere of "Picturing Freedom."
This visionary multimedia exhibition is inspired by the award-winning book by Dr. Edda L. Fields-Black, which just recently won the 2025 Pulitzer Prize in History.
Her book, titled Combahee: Harriet Tubman, the Combahee River Raid, and Black Freedom during the Civil War (Oxford University Press), highlights a previously untold chapter of our country’s history.
The exhibition brings to life the bold freedom fighters led by Harriet Tubman on a moonlit night in 1863, when 756 enslaved people liberated themselves in just six hours ‒ more than ten times the number of enslaved individuals Tubman rescued during her work on the Underground Railroad.
This event marked the largest and most successful slave rebellion in the United States, yet it has largely been overlooked until now.
The exhibition, titled "Picturing Freedom: Harriet Tubman and the Combahee River Raid," is currently on view at the Gibbes Museum of Art in Charleston through October 5.
It features an impressive array of artwork, including paintings, sculptures, mixed media works, video and audio installations, historical images, and material objects, alongside environmental photographs of the region.
On Veterans Day, November 11, 2024, Tubman was posthumously commissioned as a Brigadier General by the Maryland National Guard, making her the first woman in the U.S. to lead an armed military operation during a war.
Despite her significant contributions, she was never granted official status by the military and fought for decades to receive her pension.
Over a century after her death and 160 years after her military service, Harriet Tubman was finally recognized as a general.
On that fateful night in June 1863, Tubman led the largest slave rebellion in U.S. history.
The exhibition vividly recounts the heroic raid when 756 enslaved individuals freed themselves in a matter of hours.
The raid was conducted by one of the earliest all-Black regiments of the Union Army.
Creating the "Picturing Freedom" exhibition took three years. In 2022, Dr. Fields-Black and J. Henry Fair approached Angela Mack about the concept.
One of the notable artworks featured in the exhibition is "Can You Break a Harriet," by Kevin Pullen, an artist based in St. Simons, Georgia. This piece reflects the ongoing efforts to have Tubman honored on the U.S. $20 bill.
The Gibbes Museum has invited Dr. Vanessa Thaxton-Ward to serve as the guest curator for the "Picturing Freedom" exhibition.
As the director of the Hampton University Museum, she hand-picked artworks from institutions and private collections across the United States.
The exhibition showcases pieces by renowned artists such as Jacob Lawrence, Faith Ringgold, and William H. Johnson, alongside works by emerging contemporary artists like Stephen Towns, Terry Plater, and Kevin Pullen.J. Henry Fair has photographed the Combahee area for 30 years.
Though this uprising was orchestrated by Tubman, many biographies, history textbooks, and films about her life have neglected this crucial chapter.
The Union Army hired Tubman to gather intelligence for the daring raid into slave territory to attack major plantations in Rice Country. She commanded a network of spies, scouts, and pilots behind Confederate lines.
Tubman and her crew piloted two regiments of Black U.S. Army soldiers, the Second South Carolina
Volunteers, along with their white commanders, up the Combahee River in three gunboats. In just a few hours, they liberated hundreds of people, many of whom spoke languages that Tubman could not understand.
When Tubman and the gunboats arrived, they blew their steam whistles, prompting many of those enslaved to rush onboard and sail to freedom.
After the war, many returned to the same rice plantations from which they had escaped, purchased land, and started families.
They helped to create the distinctly American Gullah Geechee dialect, culture, and identity, which are celebrated today as part of Harriet Tubman’s significant legacy.