July 3, 2026
Dear friends,

As our family understands our history, my great grandfather, Benjamin Franklin Fields, Sr. (“Grandpa Benjamin”), was born in 1862, in Washington County, Alabama, as the child of an enslaved woman and her enslaver.

By January 1, 1863, the Emancipation Proclamation would have rendered him and his mother emancipated (In reality, what did that even mean??), although he and his family remained in Washington County. He and a brother lived parallel—yet not intersecting—lives to those of the legitimate children of the enslaver and his wife. We’re told that Grandpa Benjamin never learned to read and write; there were no schools for black children near him. Farming was his family’s vocation; at the time, farming meant food on the table.

Somehow, Grandpa Benjamin believed in freedom—the freedom that our nation’s founders had professed. Despite being unable to read and write, he applied for land under the Homestead Act of 1862, filing a claim at the Montgomery land office on May 25, 1888. He successfully “proved up” his claim, and received 120 acres of land in a community known as Sunflower, in Washington County, Alabama. That homestead grant, authorized by President Grover Cleveland on June 17, 1894, created a legacy for our family. As the years passed, Grandpa Benjamin and his three sons—Henry, Ben Jr., and George—lived on and farmed the land, providing livelihoods for a family that grew numerous there: The three sons had a total of twenty-nine children who were raised on the homestead.

Grandpa Benjamin apparently believed something else: that until his family had access to education, they would always be enslaved. When his youngest son, George, married a woman—Clara Bell Mitchell—who had been educated, and who could read and write, Grandpa Benjamin started a family school for all of his grandchildren on the homestead, probably in the mid-1920s. My mother was one of the grandchildren educated in the school, and she helped care for Aunt Clara and Uncle George’s children. Of my grandfather Henry Fields’ 16 children, more than half—9—were college graduates, most of whom went into classrooms themselves at least for a time, committing themselves to educating black children who had no other future. My mother and some of her sisters returned to Washington County classrooms after achieving their teaching certificates—bringing education to poor black families in a rural community where children otherwise would have suffered. My mother, her sisters and first cousins who taught in Washington County—those Fields Teachers—had quite a reputation as being stellar and dedicated educators, following in the footsteps of Aunt Clara.

We know our family is privileged: Access to education gave us privilege. Had it not been for Aunt Clara, many years would have passed before family members would have been high school or college graduates. That, generations later, our family now counts among us teachers and education administrators/professionals, persons who have honorably served our nation’s Armed Forces (including several WWII veterans), nurses, physicians and other healthcare professionals, business persons, ministers, and attorneys is an unparalleled accomplishment—and one we do not take for granted. From the humble start of a man born into slavery, a man who could neither read nor write, six generations later (and more descendants than I can count!), Benjamin Franklin Fields, Sr. has indeed created an incredible legacy.

Our family’s story is a rare one. For my daughters to be the fourth generation in a family to graduate from college is an achievement, no matter the race, ethnicity or background. We know the blessing of our story. We also know the responsibility that comes with the blessing.

Grandpa Benjamin was born just 86 years into the life of a new country—a country which, through nearly the entire first century of its existence as a nation (and for 200 years before), been reliant upon the labor of enslaved persons. When he died in 1950, Grandpa Benjamin had never seen racial equality; he died in the Jim Crow South where segregation was expected, legal and enforced. But he died having left a strong mark on a strong family.

I wonder what he would have thought on July 2, 1964, when President Lyndon Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act into law. I wonder if he would have said that all of the struggle was worth that single day—when persons like him had become visible.

As we approach the 250th birthday of our nation, I celebrate this monumental milestone. I celebrate for a great grandfather who believed a nation’s promises even though he did not live to see some of those promises actualized—and whose courage and perseverance allowed him, as a black man, to seek out a homestead, build a schoolhouse to educate his family, and never give up hope. His steadfast refusal to give up hope paved a path for me and for all of my family.

I celebrate for a country in which slavery was the “law of the land” for nearly its first full century of existence, but whose lawmakers chose to bend the moral arc toward justice for all Americans by amending the Constitution to legally abolish it beginning in 1865. I celebrate for a country which recognized its continued shortcomings, and whose lawmakers in the mid-1960s passed sweeping legislation to reinforce the promises and values from 100 years before. I celebrate for a nation that sees and knows that we are still a work in progress, and that still holds before us the words of our founders: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”

I celebrate for a country for which my father and a number of men in the Fields family proudly served in World War II, even though they returned home to segregation and inequitably-administered veterans’ benefits. I share their belief in a nation that can grow through struggle, find its way and be a beacon of light and harbinger of justice beyond our borders. And I will add that I believe in care for all of our veterans, who even today return from duty with struggles we can’t imagine; serving those who serve us must be a critical priority.

I celebrate for courageous women, men and children who have believed in the principles espoused by our founders and who, in peaceful protests, have raised a nation’s consciousness to take note of places where injustice had taken root. I celebrate because images of injustice moved the hearts of many to urge us all to higher ground. I celebrate for the courage of families to desegregate schools, lunch counters, libraries and other places of public accommodation. I celebrate for Mamie Till, who wanted a nation to see her murdered son—an image that changed hearts forever. I celebrate for a country whose lawmakers crossed partisan party lines to embrace a Civil Rights Act in 1964 and acknowledge that the time for justice and peace among all Americans had come.

I celebrate as one who comes from a family of educators—and my family’s value of, commitment to and love for education have meant that generations of us (now, myself included) have gone into classrooms to share knowledge and invest in our nation’s future. Education and vocational training are still the key to opportunity and raising many of us from poverty and out of hopelessness—and we must commit to the underserved.

I celebrate because this nation—and no nation—will be perfect. Many persons will work tirelessly to bend the moral arc of the universe toward justice. Our commitment to justice for all persons must be unending.

I celebrate as one who believes in a God whose love for all of God’s people—all of whom are made in God’s image and likeness—is immeasurable and unending. If we would claim ourselves to be a Christian nation, loving as scripture teaches us that Christ loved—bringing healing to all of God’s people, nourishing the hungry, walking alongside the marginalized, refusing to overlook the stranger and foreigner, willing to cross artificial, human-made boundaries—must be our example.

We’re still learning, from tremendous persons whose footsteps we are privileged to follow. We’re still growing into all that we can become.

We celebrate, because we’re not giving up.

In Christ,
+Dorothy