PIKE COUNTY, Mo. — Newspapers called him one of America’s greatest religious speakers, and he got his start right here in Northeast Missouri.
The Reverend James Fields was born a slave in Pike County Missouri in 1850. The family escaped to Quincy Illinois in 1862.
After the Civil War, Fields moved to Macomb Illinois and became a barber. While cutting hair for a living, he began studying theology and in 1875 formed a church for African-Americans. Three years later, he was ordained and began to speak nationally. Fields, his wife and three sons eventually moved to Colorado.
The reverend’s presentations were so captivating that newspapers referred to him as the “silver-tongued orator of Denver.”
Fields died at Salt Lake City in 1896 while on a fund-raising trip for the Baptist Missionary Society of North America.