Louise Thompson Patterson

Louise Alone Thompson Patterson (September 9, 1901 – August 27, 1999) was an American social activist and college professor. Thompson was acquainted with many of the leading literary figures during the Harlem Renaissance of the 1920s and 1930s, spending most of her life involved in civil rights.[1] Thompson Patterson is also known as one of the first black women to be enrolled into the University of California at Berkeley.[2]

Louise Alone Thompson Patterson
Patterson 1960 in Berlin
Born
Louise Alone Thompson

(1901-09-09)September 9, 1901
Chicago, Illinois
DiedAugust 27, 1999(1999-08-27) (aged 97)
Amsterdam Nursing Home
New York City
Known forHarlem Renaissance
Spouse(s)Wallace Thurman
William L. Patterson

Early years
Chicago, Illinois. Thompson's Birthplace.

Born in Chicago, Illinois, Patterson graduated from the University of California, Berkeley in 1923.[3] She became a professor at the renowned Hampton Institute, a historically black college (HBCU) in Virginia by age twenty-two and she worked there for five years.[4] Patterson moved to New York to join the burgeoning artistic community in Harlem. When she first went to New York, she pursued social work, but eventually she became a central figure in the literary movement.

Trans-national activism

Though Thompson organized a number of protests and opened one of the premiere Harlem salons, she became best known for her close friendship with the author Langston Hughes.[3] Both admired the Soviet system of government.Thompson founded a Harlem chapter of the Friends of the Soviet Union in, 1932.[2] The American Communist Party selected Thompson to organize a group of twenty-two Harlem writers, artists, and intellectuals to create a film about discrimination in the United States for a Soviet film company. Many important individuals of the Harlem Renaissance were a part of this group such as the author Dorthy West, and Langston Hughes. After the project fell through due to lack of funding, and pressures from U.S. business officials to pull away from future diplomatic relations with the Soviet Union, Thompson and Hughes returned to the United States to found the Harlem Suitcase Theater, which presented plays written by Hughes and other black writers and featured all-black casts. In 1932 Thompson led a group of African American actors who traveled together to visit the Soviet Union.[5]

University of California, Berkeley


Domestic activism

After graduating from college, Patterson taught at Virginia's Hampton Institute, where she led a student uprising against the predominantly white administration's paternalistic policies.[2] Throughout the protests, on each Sunday afternoon the African-American students that attended Hampton constantly sang old-time plantation songs towards white visitors.[2] Afterwards, Patterson was quite unwelcome at the Institute. This forced her to move to New York City, rapidly becoming involved with many members of the Harlem Renaissance. This was due to her affiliation and a being a member of the Urban Institute that helped fund her career at the New York School of Social Work.[2]

Moscow, Capital of Russia.

Patterson also became involved and organized several protests over the conviction of the Scottsboro boys. In Alabama, a women accused nine young African-American boys of committing an act of rape against her.[6] Patterson is also credited with helping create the Sojourners for Truth and Justice which were a radical civil rights organization led by African American women such as Louise Thompson Patterson, Shirley Graham Du Bois and Charlotta Bass from 1951 to 1952.[7] They viewed black women as a vessel that would help bring about social change to a country that they believed was against women and African-Americans.[8]

Hampton Institute in Virginia.

Marriage and family

She had a short marriage to the writer Wallace Thurman. Thompson married Thurman in August 1928 but their marriage broke up six months later when she discovered that he was homosexual. She later married William L. Patterson, a prominent member of the American Communist Party.[4]

Louise Thompson and Langston Hughes on a ship.

Later Years

She joined her husband in protesting the anti-Communist policies of Senator Joseph McCarthy in the 1950s. In the 1960s, she was involved in the Civil Rights Movement, though by that time her influence was greatly overshadowed by more notable figures.

Patterson died of natural causes on August 27, 1999, shortly before her ninety-eighth birthday, in New York City.[9] For the remainder of her life, Patterson continued to be active in political and social issues.[3]

Wallace Thurman

Legacy

In 2012 Patterson was profiled in California Magazine, a publication for alumni of the University of California, Berkeley.[10]

Patterson provided insight on daily life as an African-American individual during the "early West" using the events that place in her life as the broader changes and issues facing civil rights in America as well as highlighting those issues overseas in Russia.[11] Going against the status quo, Patterson, amongst many other black female Social Activist during this era helped pave the way for future activists pertaining to civil rights issues in the United States.[12]

Further reading
  • Howard, Walter T. We Shall Be Free!: Black Communist Protests in Seven Voices. Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press, 2013.
  • McDuffie, Erik S., Sojourning for Freedom: Black Women, American Communism, and the Making of Black Left Feminism
  • Roman, M. L, Opposing Jim Crow: African Americans and the Soviet Indictment of U.S. Racism, 2012
  • Keith Gilyard, Louise Thompson Patterson: A Life of Struggle for Justice, published by Duke University Press, 2017.

References
  1. "Patterson, Louise Alone Thompson | Encyclopedia.com". www.encyclopedia.com. Retrieved 2019-12-16.
  2. "Louise Thompson Patterson 1901-1999". The Journal of Blacks in Higher Education (25): 67. 1999. ISSN 1077-3711. JSTOR 2999389.
  3. "Patterson, Louise Alone Thompson | Encyclopedia.com". www.encyclopedia.com. Retrieved 2019-12-15.
  4. "Louise Thompson Patterson 1901-1999". The Journal of Blacks in Higher Education (25): 67. 1999. ISSN 1077-3711 – via JSTOR.
  5. "Reel Life". Cal Alumni Association. 2012-03-17. Retrieved 2019-12-15.
  6. "The Scottsboro Boys". National Museum of African American History and Culture. 2017-03-15. Retrieved 2019-12-16.
  7. McDuffie, E. S. (2008-04-01). "A "New Freedom Movement of Negro Women": Sojourning for Truth, Justice, and Human Rights during the Early Cold War". Radical History Review. 2008 (101): 81–106. doi:10.1215/01636545-2007-039. ISSN 0163-6545.
  8. McDuffie, Erik S. (2011-06-27). Sojourning for Freedom: Black Women, American Communism, and the Making of Black Left Feminism. Duke University Press. ISBN 978-0-8223-5050-7.
  9. Goldstein, Richard (September 2, 1999). "Louise Patterson, 97, Is Dead. Figure in Harlem Renaissance". New York Times. Retrieved 2008-05-31. Louise Alone Thompson Patterson, an advocate of civil rights and leftist causes, a participant in the Harlem Renaissance and a longtime associate of one of its leading figures, the poet Langston Hughes, died on Friday at the Amsterdam Nursing Home in Manhattan. She was 97.
  10. "Reel Life". Cal Alumni Association. 2012-03-17. Retrieved 2019-12-15.
  11. Wilkerson, Margaret B. (1990). "Excavating our History: The Importance of Biographies of Women of Color". Black American Literature Forum. 24 (1): 73–84. doi:10.2307/2904067. ISSN 0148-6179. JSTOR 2904067.
  12. Harris, Lashawn (2009). "Running with the Reds: African American Women and the Communist Party during the Great Depression". The Journal of African American History. 94 (1): 21–43. doi:10.1086/JAAHv94n1p21. ISSN 1548-1867. JSTOR 25610047.
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