Patrick, Deval

Impact on the world

Elected governor of Massachusetts in 2006 despite having never previously held elected office, becoming the second African American elected governor in U.S. history and, after his 2010 reelection, the first Black governor elected to a second term; his two terms emphasized health care reform, education funding in the life sciences, and infrastructure investment.

Life & background

Raised on Chicago's South Side in a one-bedroom apartment on welfare, Patrick was identified by a middle school teacher for a national program connecting academically gifted students of color to elite schools, which led him to Milton Academy and then Harvard College and Harvard Law School. He worked in the Justice Department's Civil Rights Division under President Clinton and later as a corporate attorney, including general counsel roles at Texaco and Coca-Cola, resigning from the latter over the company's refusal to investigate allegations of violence against workers at its Colombian bottling plants. With no prior elected office, he won the 2006 Massachusetts governor's race in what former governor Michael Dukakis called one of the dirtiest gubernatorial campaigns he could recall, becoming the state's first Black governor and the second African American elected governor nationally, after Douglas Wilder. He won reelection in 2010, becoming the first Black governor elected to a second term, and after leaving office in 2015 due to term limits, briefly ran for the 2020 Democratic presidential nomination before withdrawing after a poor showing in the New Hampshire primary.

Sources

1. Britannica (Deval Patrick); African American Registry; Philadelphia Tribune (The five Black governors who came before Maryland's Wes Moore)