The Department of Forestry and Environmental Conservation is pleased to host Dr. Edda Fields-Black as the Margaret H. Lloyd speaker on November 4, 2022. Dr. Fields-Black is an Associate Professor of History at Carnegie Mellon University with degrees from Emory University, the University of Florida and University of Pennsylvania.  She was raised in Miami, FL with her grandparents who were Gullah speakers from Green Pond, SC. Dr. Fields-Black has written numerous studies on the trans-national history of West African rice farmers, including Deep Roots: Rice Farmers in West Africa and the African Diaspora (Bloomington: Indiana University: 2014, 2008). In "Deep Roots," Dr. Fields-Black chronicles the development of tidal rice-growing technology by the inhabitants of the West African Rice Coast region, the region where most captives disembarking in South Carolina and Georgia originated.