Vina Fields

Vina Fields was one of the most successful and well known African American brothel madams to come out of Chicago at the turn of the century. Her career began in the 1870s when she established her brothel, House of Pleasure, in the Levee District of Chicago. At the height of her 30 year long career she was housing and managing 60 women; this enabled her to become one of Chicago's wealthiest African Americans with a reputation as a smart and giving business woman. She was described as a true “character of the red light district.” Not much is known about Vina Fields’ personal life, but historian Cynthia Blair details her massive impact on the sex industry of Chicago, giving her the recognition she deserves as an influential and important African American woman in the history of Chicago.

Early Career

Vina Fields began her career with only eight black women working for her, but she also had one white servant. This made her the only black madam in Chicago to have a servant, as the norm was that only white madams owned servants; 20 years later she was managing 19 women and employing four servants. Amidst the racial issues that divided black and white madams of Chicago there were issues in the Levee district that all madams had to face, regardless of their skin color and the most pervasive of these issues was rent. Landlords knew how lucrative the business of sex work could be so they looked the other way when it came to the illegal use of their buildings and charged extremely high prices for rent. For example, in 1898 Vina Fields was renting a house for 175 dollars a month that would have normally only gone for about 40 dollars a month. This reality often forced many brothel owners and madams to move further from the hub of the Levee but Fields was able to stay in the central region for the vast majority of her career. Her ability to maintain her brothel amidst absurd rates of rent and rampant police busts could have been due to the fact that she owned property in the Levee, making her one of only five madams in the city to do so. She would also lease out this property to other brothel keepers; her ability to maintain multiple profitable ventures within the sex industry of Chicago ultimately contributed to her unique long-term success.

1893

The Worlds Columbian Exposition which came to Chicago in 1893 brought many visitors to the region and had business booming for Fields and her fellow brothel owners, it was at this point when she hit her prime with 60 female workers. At the same time, the Panic of 1893 swept through the nation and the Chicago workforce was hit hard, thousands of men and women lost their jobs. So while 1893 brought the sex trade a steady stream of customers from the fair, other workers were devastated. Among the soup kitchens and the churches, brothel owners did what they could to help those out of work, it was said that Fields “daily fed a hungry, ragged regiment of the out-of-works.”

The Move South

1910 marked the emergence of a new Southern Levee district, Fields moved with the transition, leaving her resort on Custom House Place after 25 years. The state of the sex trade and this new district was plagued by financial insecurity and many women, especially black women, were forced out of the industry. In 1900 “of the 95 houses of ill fame counted in the census, only four (4 percent) were run and staffed by black women” demonstrating the increasing vulnerability of black women in the industry. Even Vina Fields, as successful and brilliant as she was, was not exempt from the “spatial, racial, and institutional landscapes of sexual commerce” that became more pervasive in this new space. While in this new district, navigating the new organization of the sex industry Fields moved houses every few years, sometimes due to the financial burden of renting but there is also evidence that she was being pushed out of the district by other forces. In 1907 the Health Department quarantined Fields’ house declaring the outbreak of smallpox, this public declaration was clearly bad for business and prompted Fields to again move to a new place. An association as public as this one could have just as easily put Fields out of business for good and there are those that would suggest this was the exact intention of the quarantine.

Legacy

Vina Fields’ career ended soon after the push to this new region and the way she spent the rest of her days is as of yet not well documented but what is known about her life and about her time in the sex industry paints her in a genuine and positive light as a giver and a provider. Aside from providing for her neighbors when her community fell on hard times, Fields also used her wealth to support her family. She singlehandedly put her daughter through a convent school, she also sent money back to her sisters that were living in Missouri, and all the while was the proud owner of a home in an almost all-white neighborhood south of the Levee. It is clear Fields was a good and generous women, she used her hard earned money to support her family and her community not only this but her work as a madam also provided a space for young black women of Chicago to do the same. She gave countless black women the opportunity to earn their own money, offering lucrative employment opportunities outside of the hard, low wage jobs that were available to them in the more traditional economy. She was a pillar of her community, not just for black people of Chicago but for white people as well, offering opportunity for the former and a greatly sought after service for the latter. She navigated the tough racial divisions of her time and curated a unique space for herself prosper in a world where the intersectionality of her status as a black woman made it that much harder to achieve the level of success she did.