Taylor Fields, longtime Kansas City labor attorney and community leader, dies at 77

Taylor Fields, a longtime Kansas City labor attorney known for helping build the area’s largest minority-owned firm and as a champion for the advancement of civil rights, died late Wednesday evening. He was 77.

Fields specialized in employment law and labor relations, representing major institutions including the Kansas City Area Transportation Authority and the Kansas City school district. He also was a longtime advocate for civic causes such as the expansion of wages for the working class, in one recent case successfully arguing in favor of a minimum wage ballot initiative in Kansas City before the Missouri Supreme Court.

Friends and family remembered Fields as a brilliant legal professional, trailblazer and pioneer, especially for Black Kansas Citians in the legal profession.

Vernon Howard Jr., president of the Southern Christian Leadership of Greater Kansas City, said Fields contributed to the city as a community leader, astute businessman and “a freedom fighter for Black people and the Black struggle.” Fields was the treasurer of the SCLC for the past 18 years.

“He is unquestionably one of the most outstanding men I have ever known. And I’ve always felt that way, and in his dying I am proud to say it. And he does look out for the little man, the little woman. Fights for the little man, fights for the little woman.”

Fields was born and raised in St. Louis. He first came to Kansas City for a job he accepted after earning a degree in chemical engineering from the University of Missouri. He met his wife, Delores Fields, and the pair raised three children in the area.

His journey toward the legal profession started with a moment of inspiration in his university’s student union hall. One Saturday in 1967, Fields was on his way to play a game of basketball with some friends when he walked in on a speech by civil rights leader Julian Bond.

Fields heard Bond speaking about the role of lawyers in society by having the potential to be agents of social change. He signed up for his law school entrance exam immediately and was soon accepted to UMKC Law School, said Wesley Fields, his son.

Over the decades that followed, Fields helped build what is known today as Fields & Brown, billed as Kansas City’s oldest and largest minority-owned law firm. He served large corporate clients well before other African American lawyers of his generation, Wesley Fields told The Star.

“He was really a trailblazer in the legal community,” said the younger Fields, who is also a lawyer along with his two sisters.

“When I look at many of the Black lawyers within the metropolitan area today who find themselves in large law firm as I am, or others, many of them can attribute that door being opened for them by my dad.”

Rev. Bob Hill, minister emeritus of Community Christian Church in Kansas City and SCLC board member, said Fields played an important role in the push for Medicaid expansion in Missouri and working toward securing a $15 minimum wage for Kansas City workers.

“It was completely appropriate that he was treasurer for SCLC because he himself was a treasure, treasure to the organization, to the wider community, to the nation.”

Hill said Fields was often tasked to oversee the offering invitations or solicit money from those who attended many SCLC events.

“He was the only person in my experience who was not a preacher who could quote verbatim Dr. (Martin Luther) King, Gardner C. Taylor and other luminary preachers in the African American tradition. And he had committed many of these sermons to memory, they were so essential to his character, and to his being.”

U.S. Rep. Emanuel Cleaver II, who founded Kansas City’s SCLC chapter in 1968, has known Fields since both of them graduated college. When Fields went off to law school and Cleaver went to seminary, they shared a purpose of promoting “social and civic activism that would lead to a more just and equal society for our children and grandchildren,” Cleaver said.

“His passion for justice and determination for progress made for an impeccable lawyer and allowed him to make an indelible impact that countless Kansas Citians benefit from today,” Cleaver said in a statement. “Having started the largest minority-owned law firm in Kansas City and served on the board of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference’s Kansas City chapter, he played a pivotal role in the fight for civil rights in Missouri — a fight that continues to this day.”

Clinton Adams Jr., another area lawyer and longtime friend of Fields, noted Fields graduated from Mizzou during a time when the university was “engulfed in a racially hostile environment.” When Adams attended there, Fields was a pillar of support for him personally.

Fields participated in and was honored by many civic and legal organizations. He was part of the Kansas City Metropolitan Bar Association and Jackson County Bar Association and National Bar Association. He was also inducted into the National Bar Association Hall of Fame in 2011. And he served as an elected member of Grandview’s public school board for three terms.

Of his father’s achievements, Wesley Fields named first the experience of raising three successful lawyers as his proudest. And, the younger Fields said, his father was able to achieve the professional benchmarks he desired along with doing the very thing he wanted when he first heard that inspirational call at Mizzou all those years ago.

“And that was: impact something from a social justice perspective,” Wesley Fields said.

Fields is survived by his wife Delores Fields; his three children, Carla Marie Johnson, Wesley Owen Fields, and Denise Frances Fields; his grandchildren, Parker Noel Fields and Kennedy Taylor Johnson; his brother, James Donald Fields; and his sister, Bernetta Fields.