Book Summary

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.