Life
Barbara Fields was born in Charleston,South Carolina,in 1947, [2] and was raised in Washington,D.C.,where she attended Morgan Elementary School,Banneker Junior High School,and Western High School. [3] She received her B.A. from Harvard University in 1968,and her Ph.D. from Yale University in 1978. At Yale,she was one of the last doctoral students of C. Vann Woodward,one of the preeminent American historians of the twentieth century. She appears in Ken Burns' documentary series,The Civil War and The Congress. [4] [5]
Dr. Fields has been critical of the New York Times 1619 Project for ignoring white indentured servants that could be bought and sold in Virginia in 1607 and failure to understand the economics behind slavery. [6]
Fields was the first African American woman to earn tenure at Columbia University. She has also taught at Northwestern University,the University of Michigan,and the University of Mississippi. She is widely known for her 1990 essay,"Slavery,Race and Ideology in the United States of America." [7] She authored the 2012 book Racecraft:The Soul of Inequality in American Life (along with her sister Karen Fields,a sociologist). [8] [9] [10] [5] The book argues that race is a product of racism;that racism is an ideology and a way of misunderstanding social reality;and that racecraft in American society serves to obfuscate the actual dynamics of inequality. [10]
Bard College awarded Fields an honorary doctorate in May 2007. She received the Philolexian Award for Distinguished Literary Achievement in 2017. Thavolia Glymph considers Fields one of the nation's greatest historians. [11]
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