Picturing Freedom: Harriet Tubman and the Combahee River Raid at Hampton History Museum (Hampton)

Organized by the Gibbes Museum of Art, Charleston, SC, this exhibition is inspired by Dr. Edda Fields-Black’s 2025 Pulitzer Prize Award-Winning Book, Combee: Harriet Tubman, The Combahee River Raid, and Black Freedom During the Civil War, and features photographs by renowned environmental photographer J. Henry Fair alongside paintings, sculpture, and other works by 20th and 21st century American artists that visually explore the life and legacy of Harriet Tubman and the Combahee River Raid.

The multi-media exhibition features over forty-five works to include the Hampton University Museum’s Harriet Tubman Series by Jacob Lawrence, material culture; and, HU 1978 graduate, Ronald Daise, who is featured in a short film as Minus Hamilton reenacting that historic night of freedom. The exhibition is guest-curated by Vanessa Thaxton-Ward, Ph. D., Director of the Hampton University Museum. The exhibition opened in Charleston May 23 – October 5, 2025.

Many know about Tubman’s accomplishments with the Underground Railroad, but few know about her work in South Carolina where she led soldiers to free over seven hundred enslaved people and few know about her work at Fort Monroe, Virginia. In 1865, a few years before Hampton Normal and Industrial Institute was founded Harriet Tubman spent about three months documenting and aiding the patients at the “Colored Hospital.” She was assigned by the Surgeon General to stay and work at Fort Monroe but there are no records to indicate that the appointment was ever officially made. As we commemorate VA 250, the American Revolution we look to educate and celebrate the “Road to Freedom” for people of color.