[ HBCU Presidents ] Dr. Frederick D. Patterson – 3rd President of Tuskegee & Founder of UNCF
Posted on 28. Jul, 2009 by Leshell Hatley in HBCU Presidents, Places of Scholarly Work, Scholarly Celebrations
Dr. Frederick D. Patterson
Dr. Frederick Douglass Patterson (1901-1988) was the namesake of THE Frederick Douglass (c. 1818-1895) and lived in the same neighborhood, 3 blocks away, as a matter of fact. And like his namesake, he contributed a great deal to the course of education for African-Americans and other societal advancements in the United States.
At the age of 2, Frederick D. Patterson moved from DC to Austin Texas after both his parents died of tuberculosis. Distraught by the death of his parents and this transition, he faced many challenges and was voted least likely to succeed by his 8th grade classmates. Soon after, his sister took him under her wings, sacrificed, and made certain that he received a good education. She enrolled him in the elementary school of Samuel Huston College (now Huston-Tillotson College, an HBCU) in Austin, Texas – for which she paid $8 out of her $20 a month salary.
Her investment paid! The boy’s passions for education were sparked during his years at Prairie View Normal and Industrial Institute (now Prairie View A & M University, an HBCU) when he was assigned to the Agriculture Department and began interacting with a number of top veterinarians.
Frederick Douglass Patterson would receive a stunning three advanced degrees over the next nine years. By age 31, he had achieved the Doctorate of Veterinary Medicine and the Master of Science from Iowa State, and the Doctorate of Philosophy from Cornell University. He then returned to Tuskegee Institute (now University), where he had already spent a short time teaching, as head of the Department of Agriculture and the first person on the faculty to earn the doctorate. Under his tenure, the veterinary program reached such outstanding quality that the state of Alabama granted funds for white students to study veterinary science there, a unique occurrence in the segregated South.
Dr. Patterson’s rise to academic stardom was not without its challenges. His career was infused with the juxtaposition between eloquent academic lessons and stark racial ones. Although he was the only African American in Iowa State’s veterinary program, the integrated campus would provide him with a relatively unfettered experience. However, he had to endure a humiliating situation at a summer military camp. Because he and one other African American student ate at a separate table from the white students, he was treated as a “pariah,” he wrote in his autobiography:
“I learned a lesson with regard to race that I never forgot: how people feel about you reflects the way you permit yourself to be treated. If you permit yourself to be treated differently, you are condemned to an unequal relationship.”
His range of experiences endowed Dr. Patterson with the wisdom and vision that inspired a committee to select the young man as the third president of Tuskegee Institute in 1935. His Tuskegee presidency would last nearly a quarter of a century, until 1953.
During his tenure at Tuskegee, Dr. Patterson transformed the baccalaureate institution into a prestigious university with cutting edge graduate programs, all of which are flourishing today. He founded the Commercial Dietetics program, which infused professional cooking with business and service savvy and placed African American students in unprecedented high level internships across the country. The veterinarian understandably took personal interest in the school’s Veterinary Medicine program, which afforded southern African Americans the only opportunity to become veterinarians in that region of the country. Tuskegee has graduated 75% of the nation’s African American veterinarians. His foresight into emerging fields also prompted him to spearhead the Engineering program, which from its inception enabled African Americans to gain high level technical jobs across the country.
In the late 1930’s, Dr. Patterson defied all of the political, social, and financial odds against training African American youth to fly military airplanes. Not only did he win for Tuskegee a coveted federal contract to establish a training site, but he persuaded the government to establish a full air base at Tuskegee. That accomplishment gave birth to the now legendary Tuskegee Airmen of the World War II U.S Army Corps. Nearly 1,000 African Americans completed their first training at Tuskegee Army Air Field.
As a college president, his impacts on the community extended to those at all levels of the educational spectrum. As Dr. Patterson surveyed the town of Tuskegee, the vast numbers of residents whose wooden houses were inadequate and frequently destroyed by fire struck him. Realizing the capacity of his largely vocational college, he pooled available talent and resources and created an intricate program that trained and assisted the low-income citizens in building new, sound homes made of a unique concrete construction. Methods associated with the “Tuskegee concrete block” were recognized by the federal government as a pragmatic approach to low-income housing and were adapted as models for rural homes, both domestically and internationally.
As Dr. Patterson continued to reach out to more expansive constituencies, his most farreaching initiative took flight in 1944. While searching for new methods by which private black colleges could become more financially sound, he, in 1943, published an open letter to the presidents of private HBCUs urging them to band together, pooling their resources and fundraising abilities. The next year, the United Negro College Fund, the first cooperative fund raising venture in American higher education, began its activities soliciting donations to private HBCUs, with far greater efficacy than any one of its member colleges alone. In 1964, he was elected President and Chief Executive Officer and served in both capacities until 1966. John D. Rockefeller, Jr. took immediate interest and an active role in the burgeoning organization; extraordinary leadership has propelled the organization to record heights ever since. Nearly sixty-years after its inception, UNCF remains the most successful minority higher education assistance organization in America, having raised over $2 billion for its 39 member colleges and universities and providing educational access for the nation’s African American youth.
Dr. Patterson’s prominence in higher education won him an invitation to sit on President Harry S. Truman’s President Commission from 1946-1947. That group’s findings influenced every major piece of higher education legislation during the 1960’s. Among the historic developments that evolved from the Commission were the system of community colleges and the enactment of Title III of the Higher Education Act of 1965, which brought direct institutional support to America’s smaller colleges and universities.
Dr. Frederick D. Patterson
Of all his endeavors, Dr. Patterson’s starkest accomplishment remains the scope of the people he influenced. Over the course of his 87 years, he inspired Americans as well as African Americans. He influenced higher education policy and practice. He changed the way that philanthropy would be conducted. He generated a dynamic that pushed every organization he touched to its limit. Hundreds of thousands of Americans continue to feel the effects of Frederick D. Patterson’s work and dedication.
Less than one year before his death, he received his highest honor. On June 23, 1987, President Ronald Reagan awarded Dr. Patterson the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation’s highest civilian honor. Its inscription reads,
“By his inspiring example of personal excellence and unselfish dedication, he has taught the nation that, in this land of freedom, no mind should go to waste…”
His autobiography, Chronicles of Faith, was published in 1991.
The alumni of the member institutions now totals more than 300,000 individuals. In 1996, UNCF honored its founder through the creation of the Frederick D. Patterson Research Institute, the first African American led research institute in the country to focus solely on education.
He was a member of Alpha Phi Alpha Fraternity, Inc., the first African-American male fraternity. Additionally, 19 colleges and universities awarded Dr. Patterson 20 honorary degrees.
UNCF HISTORY:
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