Voices in Our Heads
Thomas Fields Is a Man of Many Life Stories Part One
I met Thomas Fields more than ten years ago at a networking lunch at the old Frenchy’s Bistro in Long Beach. We would then often meet over the next few years to talk politics, ideas for music and art events, life and Long Beach. There would be dinners with spouses and visits to each other’s homes. We met each other’s children (Well, I still have to meet his daughter who lives in another city). I thought I knew Thomas Fields well until I recently interviewed him and I found out about the 1968 Democratic National Convention and the mutual acquaintance we knew from Washington, D.C.
We recently talked for over an hour in his home office. It became obvious over that hour that Thomas Fields has lived many lives. There just were too many stories for one podcast. This is Part One.
Thomas Fields
The Many Life Stories of Thomas Fields
This friend of mine, who I thought I knew, has been a writer/producer for advertising agencies and marketing firms in New York and Los Angeles. I asked him for a bio and he sent me no small list of companies for whom he’s written and produced ads and commercials: Hyundai, Nissan, Toyota, Mitsubishi, Chevrolet, Evian, California State Lottery, California Angels, Hardee’s Hamburgers, Hanes, Burger King, Prudential, and Vault350.
Buried in the third paragraph of his bio were the not so minor public service stints as the past President of the Board of Harbor Commissioners for the Port of Long Beach and the former Chair of the Long Beach Redevelopment Agency. Small responsibilities.
Then, there are the non-profit contributions including being a founding member of the Board of Directors of the Long Beach Ronald McDonald House. Thomas Fields has also created pro-bono advertising for non-profit, socially responsible organizations such as Greater Long Beach School-to-Career Consortium, Long Beach Museum of Art, Watts Health Foundation, Andy Street, Fred Jordan Missions, National Conference of Christian and Jews and the NAACP.
However impressive and inspiring these stories might be, I wasn’t prepared for those other stories about Thomas Fields’s earlier life.
Thomas Fields was born in 1946 and raised in a segregated Washington, D.C. One of his earliest memories was remarking about streetcars to his parents. Thomas recalls that, at that time, Black people could only ride in street cars. They were never conductors. He remembers seeing White people as streetcar conductors, as a postman, and as people who picked up the garbage. And he recalls saying to his Mother,
“Gee, aren’t white people so nice, they do all this service work for us.”
His parent thought he was out of his mind. At the time, Black people were the majority population of Washington, D.C. Living in that segregated life was very instructive for Thomas Fields.
Then, Brown vs. Board of Education came along in 1954 and public schools are ordered to be desegregated. Thomas Fields parents move to the Washington, D.C. suburb of Tacoma Park, Maryland. They would enroll him in a school where he would be one of two black children in an overwhelmingly white school.
Those educational years were marked with many racial challenges. Thomas was placed in a fast-track curriculum after sixth grade. They tested his I.Q.
“And when they tested me, I was, I hate to say this, I scored so high that they thought I had cheated.”
The pressures on him as one of the smartest kids, along with being one of a few black children in the school, sent him into rebellion. Thomas Fields went from an accelerated class to a class of low achievers. However, he still had a point he wanted to make.
“I made a decision that I wasn’t going to do homework but what I was going to do was I was going to ace every test they gave me.”
By the time, he got to the twelfth grade, Thomas had enough of educational institutions. He decided to forgo college and go to work for a small government agency called the National Security Agency (NSA).
Fast forward through the story about the two years at the agency (which I did not know) and the story of falling in love with writing because he was once a stutterer (which I also did not know) to the story about a stint in the Army in 1966 in Atlanta, Georgia. For those historically challenged, this was during the beginning years of the Vietnam build-up. However, Thomas Fields had a “get out of jail card.” He didn’t have to go to Vietnam because he had worked for the NSA. While in the Army, Thomas kept writing.
“I also met some fascinating people…H. Rap Brown (now known as Jamil Abdullah Al-Amin) being one.”
After the military, Thomas returned to Washington. After all that he had seen and lived, he knew he couldn’t stay in Washington, D.C. But before he moved, there was one more set of adventures to experience. Thomas went to work for the National Welfare Rights Organization (another little fact I didn’t know about Thomas Fields) working on their newsletter. In the evening, he worked for the Washington Free Press. With credentials representing both organizations, Thomas traveled to Chicago and the chaotic and often violent street-marred 1968 National Democratic Convention. (Another unmentioned story but one that you must read). You might remember the often-quoted slogan from that period, “The Whole World is Watching!”
“And we get there and I have never, in my entire life, been so freaked out and scared because Chicago was an armed camp.”
Thomas Fields as a Mad Man
Thomas Fields left Chicago with two results: He’d met the woman he would later marry and he was soured by the political violence he had witnessed. Fast forward again and Thomas moves to New York to write the Great American Novel. His future wife, Susan, moves with him to pursue a modern dance career. He worked his way through a stint on the docks of New York up to a career on Madison Avenue at a time when people of color were a rarity there. If you saw the television series, Mad Men, you would understand what Thomas Fields was talking about.
“So, I ended up learning about this thing called Advertising which I had no clue what it was about.”
Thomas thought it was about writing jingles. Once again, in his life, Thomas would end up in a place where he would be one of two black people in an all-white environment. It was a time of Affirmative Action and companies wanted to add color to their ranks (Before you think that it was easy if you were a person of color, think again. I know from personal experience). The company committed to training him and Thomas was thrown into a sink or swim alternative world on Madison Avenue. Nine months go by and no word on whether he has a permanent job.
“I go to my boss and say ‘Hey, you know it’s been nine months, it’s only supposed to be six months, what’s the deal? Am I here or not?’”
The response? “You’re obviously here now, aren’t you?” Welcome to Madison Avenue as a writer and fast forward through seven years to a position as a writer/producer of advertising in New York City. While Thomas speaks about the exciting times, there are again the racial challenges being the only black writer in the agency.
Next on Thomas Fields Is a Man of Many Life Stories
We’ll continue our conversation with Thomas Fields in the upcoming Part Two where we’ll see the Manhattan skyline in the rearview mirror (literally) as he embarks on his long-dreamed cross-country trip through America to Southern California. Stay tuned.
