Barbara J. Fields

Barbara Jeanne Fields (born in 1947 in Charleston, South Carolina) is a professor of American history at Columbia University. Her focus is on the history of the American South, 19th-century social history, and the transition to capitalism in the United States.

Barbara Fields was raised in Washington, D.C., where she attended Morgan Elementary School, Banneker Junior High School, and Western High School. 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.

Fields was the first African American woman to receive 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." She authored the 2012 book Racecraft: The Soul of Inequality in American Life (along with her sister Karen Fields, a sociologist). 

The book argues that race is a product of racism and that racism is an ideology and a way of misunderstanding social reality. That racecraft in American society obfuscates the actual dynamics of inequality. Bard College awarded Fields an honorary doctorate in May 2007. She received the Philolexian Award for Distinguished Literary Achievement in 2017.