Chronicles Of Faith
The Autobiography of Frederick D. Patterson
Edited by Martia Graham Goodson; By Frederick D. Patterson
University of Alabama Press
Records the life of a man who influenced the course of higher education for African Americans and Africans throughout the twentieth century
Patterson, orphaned soon after birth in 1901, became a veterinary scientist at Tuskegee Institute and soon thereafter--at the depths of the Depression--was selected as president of that most important institution. It was at Tuskegee that Patterson formulated the idea and the organization--the United Negro College Fund. In doing so he made a place for himself in U.S. and world history by providing the model of cooperative fund raising that enabled financially starved private black colleges to survive and serve the youth of the segregated North and South.
Patterson, orphaned soon after birth in 1901, became a veterinary scientist at Tuskegee Institute and soon thereafter--at the depths of the Depression--was selected as president of that most important institution. It was at Tuskegee that Patterson formulated the idea and the organization--the United Negro College Fund. In doing so he made a place for himself in U.S. and world history by providing the model of cooperative fund raising that enabled financially starved private black colleges to survive and serve the youth of the segregated North and South.
For more than a half century Frederick Patterson stood at the center of much that happened in higher education in America. . . . [He] recounts his life from his boyhood in Texas through veterinary school in Iowa to the presidency of Tuskegee Institute from there to the presidency of the Philips Stokes Fund and the founding of the United Negro College Fund. . . . This story of his life is extremely important.’
—Journal of Southern History
Most of Martia Graham Goodson’s career was spent teaching at Baruch College, starting in 1974. After 33 years, she retired as an Associate Professor in the Department of Black and Hispanic Studies. Dr. Goodson published several books, including Church Ladies: Untold Stories of Harlem Women in the Powell Era.
