Cleo Fields - Early Life

Early Life

Fields was born in Port Allen, Louisiana, near Baton Rouge, the seventh of ten children. His dock-worker father died when he was four, leaving his mother, Alice, to tend for the children herself. Their extreme poverty led to an eviction, after which they moved to South Baton Rouge. Alice took in laundry and worked as a maid to make ends meet. Fields reminisced in the Internet magazine Salon on having holes in the bottoms of his shoes and not being able to attend 25-cent school field trips. In the Louisiana Political Review, he noted that during childhood he considered his life a normal one. "I didn't know what poor was. I thought mommas were supposed to put three patches in a pair of pants. In junior high school, it really hit me in the face. That's when I realized what my mother was going through."

He worked in a store and a McDonald's restaurant to help out the family. Yet the flames of ambition burned in Fields at an early age. During the seventh grade, he told the Memphis Commercial- Appeal, his teacher asked class members to stand up and state their aspirations. "My turn came around," he recalled. "I had on roach stompers and baggy pants. I said, `My name is Cleo Fields and I want to be president when I grow up.' Everybody laughed, including the teacher. I'll never forget that day." During high school, Fields worked for the Mayor's Office of Youth Opportunity, which helped pay for his college tuition.