creatives June 17, 2022

The Combahee River flows southeast through South Carolina, a 40-mile route that spills into the Saint Helena Sound. More than a century and a half ago on June 1, 1863, the Combahee turned the tide of emancipation when Harriet Tubman and her regiment of 150 Black Union troops led more than 700 escaped slaves to freedom aboard two gunboats. For Tubman, the river marked her heroism as the first woman to lead an armed US military operation in the Combahee Ferry Raid. For illustrator, comic creator, and scholar Ajuan Mance, it’s symbolic of the movement — geographically, between the North and the South, and politically, from the Emancipation Proclamation and Juneteenth, to the Civil Rights Act — Tubman and other activists have made throughout history.

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