William L. Patterson (27 August 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 later active in the Civil Rights Congress, and in 1951 presented a document, We Charge Genocide, to the United Nations, charging the U.S. federal government with complicity in genocide for failing to take action against lynching in the United States.
Biography
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]
References
- ^ "Sacco Aftermath.". Time Magazine. September 5, 1927. http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,723241-2,00.html. Retrieved on 2008-10-12. "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
- ^ "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. March 7, 1980. http://select.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=F10611F83F5F12728DDDAE0894DB405B8084F1D3. Retrieved on 2008-05-31. "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."
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