Armed with a list of questions on a legal pad and a tape recorder, Edda Fields-Black and her older sister went from house to house in Brownsville recording her family’s history – a task she was paid to do by her mom, historian Dorothy Jenkins Fields.
The Miami native was about 8 years old at the time, but this task planted the seeds of curiosity about history —particularly family history— that she credits her mom with instilling in her.
Being raised by a historian led her to follow her mother’s footsteps. Fields-Black is now a professor of history at Carnegie Mellon University and director of the school’s Dietrich College Humanities Center and author of two books, the second of which just won a Pulitzer Prize for history.
Read more at: www.miamiherald.com
