William L. Patterson
William L. Patterson (August 27, 1891 – March 5, 1980) was a leader in the Communist Party USA and head of the International Labor Defense, a group that offered legal representation to communists, trade unionists, and African-Americans in cases involving issues of political or racial persecution. On August 22, 1927, he was among the 156 arrestees protesting the execution of immigrant anarchists Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti.[1]
Patterson was active in the Civil Rights Congress. In 1951 he presented the document, We Charge Genocide, to the United Nations, charging the U.S. federal government with complicity in genocide for pass legislation or take action against lynching in the United States. (By that time, it had much decreased in frequency.)
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Biography [edit]
Patterson was the first African-American graduate of Tamalpais High School, Mill Valley, California, in 1911. In the yearbook, his stated ambition was "to be a second Booker T. Washington."[2] He was married to Louise Thompson Patterson. He died in 1980.[3]
Marriage and family [edit]
He married Louise Thompson in the 1930s. A writer, she had a long association with the poet Langston Hughes and they collaborated on a proposal for a documentary about Harlem culture.
Works [edit]
- Civil Rights Congress (1970). In William L. Patterson. We Charge Genocide: The Historic Petition to the United Nations for Relief from a Crime of the United States Government against the Negro People. New York: International Publishers. p. 238. Retrieved February 9, 2010.
- Patterson, William L. (1967). Ben Davis : crusader for Negro freedom and socialism. Chronology & bibliography by Oakley C. Johnson. New York: New Outlook. p. 48. OCLC 1146470.
- Patterson, William L. (1971). The Man Who Cried Genocide: An Autobiography. New York: International Publishers. p. 233. OCLC 132403. Retrieved February 9, 2010.
- Patterson, William (December 22, 1936). "Revolutionäre Negerlieder anlässlich der Paul Robeson Konzerte", Deutsche Zentral Zeitung[4]
References [edit]
- ^ "Sacco Aftermath.". Time Magazine. September 5, 1927. Retrieved October 12, 2008. "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."
- ^ Tamalpais Graduate, 1911, Tamalpais Union High School, Mill Valley, California
- ^ Ledbetter, Les (March 7, 1980). "William Patterson, Lawyer, Dead at 89. Activist Fought for Black Causes. Joined With Paul Robeson in Accusing U.S. at U.N. Opened Harlem Law Office.". New York Times. Retrieved May 31, 2008. "William Patterson, a lawyer and writer active in the American Communist Party for half a century, died Wednesday night at Union Hospital in the Bronx after a prolonged illness. He was 89 years old."
- ^ Sheila Tully Boyle, Andrew Bunie, Paul Robeson: The Years of Promise and Achievement Sheridan Books (2001), p. 485, see footnote 23. Retrieved December 6, 2011
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