Patrick, Deval

Deval Patrick was born in Chicago, Illinois on July 31, 1956. His father, a musician, left the family while Patrick was young. Patrick was raised by his mother near the Robert Taylor Homes on Chicago's South Side. While in the eighth grade, Patrick was recruited into a program called A Better Chance, which provided scholarships to inner city students. After attending an elite private school, Milton Academy outside of Boston, Massachusetts, Patrick was accepted to Harvard University, where he earned his A.B. degree in English and American literature in 1978.

After graduating from Harvard, Patrick was awarded a Rockefeller Fellowship, where he worked for the United Nations, traveling and living in the Sudan. He returned to the United States in 1979, and enrolled in Harvard Law School, and earned his J.D. degree in 1982. After working as a clerk in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit in Los Angeles for a year, Patrick moved to New York City and joined the NAACP Legal Defense and Education Fund. There, he met, and filed a lawsuit in a voting rights case against then Governor Bill Clinton He remained with the NAACP until 1986, when he joined the Boston law firm of Hill & Barlow, P.C. as a partner. He continued his civil rights work, and in 1994, President Clinton appointed Patrick to the position of assistant attorney general in charge of the Department of Justice's Civil Rights Division. In this role, Patrick worked to ensure that federal laws banning discrimination were enforced. He also oversaw an investigation into a series of church burnings throughout the South.

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