William Lorenzo Patterson (August 27, 1891 – March 5, 1980) was an African-American leader in theCommunist Party USA and head of theInternational Labor Defense, a group that offered legal representation to communists, trade unionists, and African Americans in cases involving issues of political or racial persecution.
William Lorenzo Patterson was born August 27, 1891, inSan Francisco,California.[1] His father, James Edward Patterson, originally hailed from the island ofSt. Vincent, in theBritish West Indies.[1] His mother, Mary Galt Patterson, had been born a slave in the state ofVirginia and was the daughter of the organizer of a volunteer regiment of black soldiers who fought with the Union Army during theAmerican Civil War.[1]
Patterson's father was aSeventh-day Adventist missionary toTahiti and he spent extensive time there, with the rest of the family moving between the California cities ofOakland andMill Valley, where William attended public schools.[1]
In 1911, Patterson was the first African-American graduate ofTamalpais High School, inMill Valley, California. In his yearbook, he stated an ambition "to be a secondBooker T. Washington."[2] After his graduation, Patterson supported himself working as a laborer in railroad dining cars and on boats that worked thePacific coast.[1] He saved up enough money to enter theUniversity of California, Berkeley but was expelled during the years ofWorld War I for his refusal to participate in compulsory military training.[1]
Deciding to set his sights on becoming a lawyer, Patterson entered theHastings College of Law from which he graduated in 1919.[3] He failed the California State Bar Examination, however, and decided to pursue emigration toLiberia and took a job as a cook on a mail ship to England as a means to that end.[3] Patterson found his inquiries about Liberian emigration put off in England because of his lack of construction or practical craft skills. Determined to return to the United States, he landed in New York and gained employment as alongshoreman.[3]
Patterson was able to put his college degree to use by finding employment as a clerk in a law office, helping to write briefs, and studying to take the New York State Bar Examination, which he passed in 1924.[3] Meanwhile, he married his first wife, the former Minnie Summer, and made numerous personal acquaintances associated with the boomingHarlem Renaissance.[3]
Among Patterson's New York friends was the radical political activistRichard B. Moore, who persuaded Patterson to put his legal skills to work in the effort to prevent the execution of the Italian immigrant anarchistsSacco and Vanzetti, who were convicted of murder in a controversial and highly politicizedMassachusetts trial.[3]
Patterson joined theWorkers (Communist) Party and became head of theInternational Labor Defense, a communist legal advocacy organization.
On August 22, 1927, he was among the 156 persons arrested for protesting the execution of immigrantsNicola Sacco andBartolomeo Vanzetti, both of whom were anarchists.[4]
Patterson was active in theCivil Rights Congress, which succeeded the ILD. In 1951 he presented the documentWe Charge Genocide to theUnited Nations that charged theUS federal government withcomplicity in genocide for failing to pass legislation or prosecute persons responsible forlynching, most of whose victims were black men. After he returned from delivering the document in Paris, theUnited States Department of State revoked his passport and barred him from further travel abroad.[5]
He marriedLouise Thompson on September 3, 1940.[6] A writer, she had a long association with the poetLangston Hughes, and they collaborated on a proposal for a documentary about Harlem culture. On March 15, 1943, the couple had their only child, MaryLouise Patterson, in Chicago, IL.
At the age of 88, Patterson died in 1980 at Union Hospital, inthe Bronx, following a prolonged illness.[7]
Patterson's papers, introduced by a five and a half page biography, are housed atHoward University.[8]
For "sauntering and loitering" in front of the State House in Boston, 156 men and women were arraigned, found guilty. All but six were fined $5 and paid the fine. The others— Edna St. Vincent Millay, poet; Ellen Hayes, retired Wellesley College professor; John Howard Lawson, playwright; William Patterson, Negro lawyer; Ela Reeve Bloor and Catherine Huntington, liberal gentlewomen—were fined $10.
