John Malcolm Patterson

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John Malcolm Patterson (born September 27, 1921) is an American politician who was the forty-ninth Governor of Alabama, from 1959 to 1963.

Patterson was born in Goldville, Alabama. He joined the US Army in 1939 and served in the North African, Sicilian, Italian, Southern France, and German campaigns of World War II. In 1945, he left the Army as a major, and obtained a law degree from the University of Alabama, but was recalled to active duty in the Army from 1951 to 1953 in the Korean War.

After his military service, Patterson joined the law practice of his father, Albert Patterson. In 1954, Albert Patterson was nominated for Attorney General on a platform promising to clean up crime, but was shot to death in June of 1954. John Patterson replaced his father on the Democratic ticket in a special election, and was elected to the post of Attorney General.

As Attorney General, Patterson worked against organized crime, but his activities against the civil rights movement gained more attention. He managed to ban the NAACP from operating in the state of Alabama, and legally blocked the black community's boycotts in Tuskegee and Montgomery. With backing from the Ku Klux Klan, Patterson ran for Governor in 1958, and won, defeating George Wallace, making him the youngest governor in Alabama history, and the first to move directly from the post of Attorney General to Governor.

Patterson's clashes with the civil rights movement continued during his tenure as governor. A supporter of the state's segregationist policies, Patterson instigated the expulsion of black students for staging a sit-in at Alabama State University, and defended Alabama's voter registration policies against federal criticism. He withheld police protection for interracial bus riders who were staging a "Freedom Ride" from Washington D.C. to New Orleans, and many of the riders were badly beaten by white mobs at the Birmingham bus station due to Patterson's deliberate neglect. Subsequent freedom riders were guaranteed safe passage only with the intervention of then Attorney General Robert Kennedy.

More positively, during Governor Patterson's tenure, the Alabama legislature approved greatly increased funding for highway and school construction, and provided additional funding for facilities for the mentally ill. Programs to improve Alabama's waterways and docks were expanded. Laws curtailing loan sharking were passed. In 1960, NASA designated Huntsville, Alabama, as the site for the George C. Marshall Space Flight Center.

Patterson was defeated in a 1966 run for governor by Lurleen Wallace, ran unsuccessfully for the post of Chief Justice of the State Supreme Court in 1972, and was appointed to the State Court of Criminal Appeals in 1984, where he remained until his retirement in 1997.

A ninety minute documentary film on John Patterson was completed in 2007 by Alabama filmmaker Robert Clem. Entitled John Patterson: In the Wake of the Assassinsthe film features an extended interview with Patterson himself as well as interviews with journalists, historians and such key figures as John Seigenthaler, aide to Robert Kennedy at the time of the freedom rides.