Ed Fields
Edward Reed Fields is an American white supremacist and anti-Semite. He helped found the National States' Rights Party, and was for several decades the editor of the white supremacist newspaper The Thunderbolt, later renaming it The Truth At Last.
Early life
Fields was born in 1932 in Chicago, Illinois, and moved at an early age to Atlanta, Georgia, where he graduated from Catholic school. He was raised in Marietta, Georgia. His parents were both practicing Catholics. During this time he became active in far-right politics, and associated himself with the Black Front, a local Nazi organization, serving as a recruiter. He first became interested in Nazism aged 14.Fields attended law school in Atlanta, but transferred to the Palmer College of Chiropractic in 1953 and graduated in 1956. Fields began practice as a chiropractor, although this occupation was soon overshadowed by his political activity.
White supremacy
Fields was active in several white supremacist political organizations, joining the Columbians, an anti-black and anti-Semitic group, in high school, and joining J. B. Stoner's Christian Anti-Jewish Party in 1952; he later served as its Executive Director. He was also a member of the American Anti-Communist Society in 1950 and 1951.National States' Rights Party
He founded the short-lived United White Party in 1956; it merged with another racist group the States' Rights party. This became, in 1958, the National States' Rights Party, which advocated racial segregation and white supremacy; he served as its National Director while Stoner served as its National Chairman. Fields edited the party's newspaper, The Thunderbolt. During this time period, he frequently wrote to print publications detailing his beliefs, for instance in 1969 a letter by Fields was published in Playboy, alleging, "we will never have law and order in America until all Negroes are deported back to Africa and completely removed from this nation that was founded and built by the great white race."Fields and the National States' Rights Party in 1963 were enlisted by Alabama Gov. George Wallace and state public safety chief Albert Lingo to create pretexts that Wallace used to order closed public schools that were slated for integration and to deploy state troopers—over the objections of local authorities—in communities otherwise determined to comply with federal court orders to desegregate.
On December 27, 1963, Fields was brought to the United States Secret Service's attention as a possible threat against protected individuals. This was divulged as part of the John Fitzgerald Kennedy's assassination file release by the National Archives and Records Administration in 2017. The Federal Bureau of Investigation considered that Fields was "one step removed from being insane."
In 1964, American Nazi Party leader George Lincoln Rockwell informed the FBI that Fields had told him that a group of right-wing former U.S. military officers, allegedly including John G. Crommelin, William Potter Gale, and Pedro del Valle, were conspiring to overthrow the U.S. government. Fields opposed the plot and told Rockwell that he was doing everything he could to dissuade those involved. However, Rockwell said he had no choice but to report the conspiracy, fearing that it would cause irreparable damage to the far-right cause in the United States.
In 1976, following Alabama Attorney General Bill Baxley's opening of prosecution against Robert Edward Chambliss, who was one of the bombers of the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Fields wrote a letter to Baxley, referring to him as an "honorary nigger" and threatening to assassinate him. Baxley responded with his own letter the following day, telling Fields, "My response to your letter of February 19, 1976, is - kiss my ass."
Later
Following J. B. Stoner's imprisonment for his involvement in the 1958 Bethel Baptist Church bombing, Fields lost the trust of many party members, largely due to his increasing activity with the Ku Klux Klan and decreasing involvement with the party, and was expelled from the party in August 1983. He continued publishing The Thunderbolt, but changed the newspaper's name to The Truth At Last. Fields founded the white supremacist America First Party in 1993, and spoke at the Populist Party's 1994 convention.Fields attended the 2001 funeral of Klansman Byron De La Beckwith, who murdered civil rights activist Medgar Evers.
In 2008, Fields retired from politics.
Works cited
Category:Living people
Category:Neo-Nazi politicians in the United States
Category:20th-century American newspaper publishers
Category:American chiropractors
Category:American Holocaust deniers
Category:American Ku Klux Klan members
Category:People from Atlanta
Category:Activists from Chicago
Category:People from Marietta, Georgia
Category:Palmer College of Chiropractic alumni
Category:National States' Rights Party politicians
Category:American newspaper editors