Wild Futures Taking Flight Program and Speaker Bios

Dr Edda Fields-Black

Dr. Edda L. Fields-Black teaches history at Carnegie Mellon University and serves as Director of the Dietrich College Humanities Center. She has written extensively about the history of West African rice farmers, including in such works as Deep Roots: Rice Farmers in West Africa and the African Diaspora. She was a co-editor of Rice: Global Networks and New Histories, which was selected as a Choice Outstanding Academic Title. Fields-Black has served as a consultant for the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture's permanent exhibit, "Rice Fields in the Low Country of South Carolina." She is the executive producer and librettist of "Unburied, Unmourned, Unmarked: Requiem for Rice," a widely performed original contemporary classical work by celebrated composer John Wineglass.

Fields-Black is a descendent of Africans enslaved on rice plantations in Colleton County, South Carolina; her great-great-great grandfather fought in the Combahee River Raid in June 1863.

Her determination to illuminate the riches of the Gullah dialect, and to reclaim Gullah Geechee history and culture, has taken her to the rice fields of South Carolina and Georgia to those of Sierra Leone and Republic of Guinea in West Africa.

COMBEE has been named WINNER of the Association for Afro-American Historical and Genealogical Society’s 2024 Marsha M. Greenlee History Award, a FINALIST for the Association for the Study of African American Life and History's Book Prize for the best book on African-American history and culture and finalist for the South Carolina Historical Society for the best book on South Carolina's history, as well as named among "The Best Nonfiction Books of 2024," by Bloomberg.com," "Also Recommended" among the "Best Books of 2024," in The New Yorker, "Best Civil War Books of 2024," Civil War Monitor, "Top 10 History Books: 2024," Booklist, Oxford University Press Best "Books of 2024".

Zoë Charlton

Zoë Charlton (Baltimore, MD) creates figure drawings, collages, installations, and animations that depict her subject’s relationship to culturally loaded objects and landscapes.  Charlton received her MFA degree from the University of Texas at Austin and participated in residencies at Artpace (TX), McColl Center for Art + Innovation (NC), Ucross Foundation (WY), the Skowhegan School of Painting (ME), and the Patterson Residency at the Creative Alliance (MD).

Her work has been included in national and international exhibitions including The Delaware Contemporary (DE), the Harvey B. Gantt Center (NC), Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art (AR), Studio Museum of Harlem (NY), Contemporary Art Museum (TX), the Zacheta National Gallery of Art (Poland), and Haas & Fischer Gallery (Switzerland).

She is a recipient of a Pollock-Krasner grant (2012) and a Rubys grant (2014). Museum collections include The Phillips Collection (DC), Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art (AR), Birmingham Museum of Art (AL), Baltimore Museum of Art (MD), and Studio Museum in Harlem (NY).
 

Dr. Leni Sorenson

Dr. Leni Sorensen is a culinary historian specializing in the lives of Black cooks and 19th-century culinary practices and mores. Sorensen was featured in the highly acclaimed Netflix series "High on the Hog: How African American Cuisine Transformed America." Sorensen was born in California, was a member of the 1960s folk music recording group The Womenfolk, farmed for eight years in South Dakota, and is the mother of four and the grandmother of seven. Throughout all those years, she cooked, taught cooking, and talked about food; at one time catering to movie crews, at another, starting a tamale business. After moving to Virginia in 1982 she majored in History at Mary Baldwin College and earned her MA/PhD at the College of William and Mary in American Studies. She worked for over thirty years as a university lecturer, museum consultant, hands-on presenter and researcher with a focus on African American slavery, American agriculture, and women’s work in colonial and post-colonial America. Retired from six years as the African American Research Historian at Monticello she now continues to lecture, consult and write on issues of food history and teaches home provisioning and rural life skills from her home in Western Albemarle County.  

Dr. Samuel W. Black

Samuel W Black is the Director of the African American Program/Museum of African American History at the Senator John Heinz History Center.  With 33 years in the museum field, he is a former President of the Association of African American Museums (2011-2016) and served on the Executive Council and the Advisory Council of the Association for the Study of African American Life & History (2003-06) as well as the program committee of the American Alliance of Museums (2010-11). He has served on the board of directors of the International Black Business Museum project (2020-2024); Sankofa Village for the Arts; and the Council of the Pennsylvania Historical Association. He is the recipient of the Dr. John E. Fleming Award of the AAAM in 2016, a 2018 graduate of the Jekyll Island Management Institute of the Southeastern Museums Conference (SEMC), Smithsonian Affiliates fellow; a 2019 Fulbright Germany fellow; the 2024 American Association for State and Local History, History Leadership Institute, and the 2024 ASALH Mary McCleod Bethune Award. He has served as an advisor to Rivers of Steel Heritage; the Center for Afro American Urban Studies and the Economy; Smithsonian Traveling Exhibition Service (SITES); and chairs Pennsylvania International Underground Railroad Month Committee.

Black is the editor of Soul Soldiers: African Americans and the Vietnam Era (2006); co-author of Through the Lens of Allen E. Cole: A Photographic History of African Americans in Cleveland, Ohio (2012) and editor of The Civil War in Pennsylvania: The African American Experience (2013) that received the AASLH Leadership in History Award of Merit in 2014.
 

Ernestine "Tina" Wyatt

Retired nurse, educator and artist, Ernestine "Tina" Wyatt is the great-great-great-grandniece of Harriet Tubman, the iconic abolitionist and Underground Railroad conductor. Born into a lineage of courage and resilience, Wyatt continues in this spirit through her own endeavors and advocacy to ensure that Harriet Tubman’s work and legacy are recognized and honored. he played a vital role in establishing Harriet Tubman Day in Washington DC and was instrumental in lobbying for Tubman's recognition as a soldier in the Civil War, which eventually led to her induction into the United States Army Military Intelligence Corps Hall of Fame at Fort Huachuca, Arizona, in June 2021. Wyatt is also part of the ongoing efforts to have Harriet Tubman's image featured on the twenty-dollar bill.