Jack Fields
1845 - 1898
Jack Fields’ first known appearance in Liberty was as a railroad laborer boarding in the Tillery home in the 1870 Federal Census. He reported that he could read, but he could not write. Three years later, his daughter Lizzie Fields Donley was born in Lathrop, mother unknown. Jack did not appear again until 1895, when he married Margaret Farris of Liberty. Like hundreds of others, day laborers and tenants were transient enough to be missed in census records as they moved around Clay County or went to find work in Kansas City. In late February of 1898, Jack died in Liberty, and was buried in Fairview Cemetery. There is no documentation of his death or burial, and he was about to become one of the many forgotten people buried at Fairview.
Multiple newspaper articles report that a week after Jack was buried, his body was stolen by grave robbers. Authorities suspected that Kansas City, Missouri, medical students committed the act. While they had an African American body in their possession, the students insisted it was not Jack Fields. In the 18th and 19th centuries, anatomists’ lack of legal means to obtain bodies to study created a demand for grave robbing. African American bodies buried in a segregated section away from the main, white cemetery, made them prime targets with no consequence for the guilty students. Jack Fields’ family and friends buried him in Fairview Cemetery, but he isn’t here now.
St. Louis Globe-Democrat (St. Louis) March 8, 1898
Kansas City Journal (Kansas City) March 7, 1898
St. Louis Post-Dispatch (St. Louis) March 8, 1898
Jstordaily Article on the lack of consent of Black people in medical research, and how grave robbing for anatomists was an extension of that. Also comments on the layout of the cemetery itself, and why segregating this Black population into the less desirable, more obscured part of the cemetery was a factor for grave robbers and medical students.