Inez C. Fields Explained

Inez C. Fields, a native of Hampton, Virginia, became one of the first known black women to become a second-generation lawyer.^[1] She graduated from Boston University School of Law in 1922^[2] and became the second black woman admitted to the Massachusetts bar on April 15, 1924.^[3] Fields did not remain in Massachusetts, but instead returned to Virginia, where she joined her father's law firm in Hampton.^[4] On November 7, 1928, she became the third black woman admitted to the Virginia bar.^[5] Joining Marian Poe and Bertha Douglass, Inez was one of three black women practicing law in Virginia between the late 1920s and 1960.^[6] Inez C. Fields is the daughter of George Washington Fields.^[7] George Washington Fields, who had been blind since 1896, graduated from Cornell University Law School in 1890.^[8] He is likely the first black lawyer in Virginia whose daughter followed him into the legal profession.^[9] Fields practiced with her father until his death in 1932, and then practiced on her own.

Notes and References

1. J. Clay Smith, Jr., Black Women Lawyers: 125 Years at the Bar; 100 Years in the Legal Academy, 40 How. L.J. 365, 376 (1997).
2. Book: The Southern Workman. 1922. 345–.
3. J. Clay Smith, Jr.,Emancipation: The Making of the Black Lawyer, 1844-1944 111 (1993).
4. Id.; Virginia G. Drachman, The New Woman Lawyer and the Challenge of Sexual Equality in Early Twentieth-Century America, 28 Ind. L. Rev. 227, 234 (1995).
5. Id. at 237.
6. Paul Finkelman, Not Only the Judges' Robes Were Black: African-American Lawyers as Social Engineers, 47 Stan. L. Rev. 161, 209 n.133 (1994).
7. J. Clay Smith, Jr., Emancipation: The Making of the Black Lawyer, 1844-1944 at 231.
8. Id.
9. Id. at 232.