Aletha Fields, 51, is long-term Louisville resident who lives in Irish Hill. She is the mother of two adult children and the spouse of Jai Everette. Aletha holds a Bachelor of Arts in English from the University of Louisville; a Master of Arts in Teaching from the University of Louisville; and a certificate in Copyediting from the University of California San Diego. For Aletha, teaching is pure revolution and continual social change.

She is a community-raised social justice activist with her most prestigious roots in the Fairness Campaign of which she is a past co-coordinator. Fields believes Fairness does a city good and promotes equity and inclusion in all aspects of life for all people. As an activist, she has tackled and addressed community issues including LGBTQ+ rights, police brutality, homelessness, immigration rights, mental health access, and equity in education.

As past president and board member, Aletha is a long-standing leader and facilitator with the Louisville Depression and Bipolar Support Alliance. She has worked for ten years to build a safe community for people who live with and are friends and family of persons with mental health diagnoses. Her work there includes starting a group meeting at Baptist East, serving as a weekly facilitator for the group, supporting education about mental health, decriminalizing mental illness, and public speaking about the group’s resources and about mental health issues.

Aletha is a recorded spoken word artist and published poet who often writes and performs with her students from Iroquois High School. Art and activism go hand in hand for Aletha as she writes and performs her poetry about social justice; fighting against racism, sexism, homophobia, classism, ageism, and ableism; love and war; and mental health.

Aletha is also a past visiting lecturer at the University of Missouri Kansas City and the Harvard Graduate School of Education. She currently teaches full time in Jefferson County Public Schools (21 years) and has taught as an adjunct lecturer at the University of Louisville (English, Pan-African Studies, and the Porter School of Education and Human Development). Aletha has been blessed to teach and serve over 4000 students and their families. She stays connected to her students as they start their careers, pursue further education, raise families, fight the criminal justice system, navigate growing up, deal with loss, celebrate joys, and become contributing members of society.

Aletha loves serving her colleagues as a 15-year professional representative in the Jefferson County Teachers Association (JCTA), is newly elected to the Association’s board of directors, and enters her eighth year as a JCTA diversity trainer. She was selected by the NEA Diversity Cadre to train teachers in Ferguson, MO, in response to the one-year anniversary of the assassination of Michael Brown. Her proud membership in JCTA spans her entire 21-year teaching career.

Aletha also extends her passion to teach and help others through her work as a minister and is a faithful member of Bates Memorial Baptist Church. She enjoys assisting people in finding essential resources, being a conduit for information sharing, and preaching and teaching in her community and across the United States. She has been licensed and ordained for 18 years. Her favorite ministry work includes being a choir director for Down By The Wayside Choir; teaching creative writing and performance to women in recovery; teaching recovery Bible study for women at Wayside; music ministry at the Kentucky State Reformatory; and now, performing virtual weddings.