First Black Massachusetts Governor comes from Southside of Chicago. Deval Laurdine Patrick is First Black Governor of Massachusetts
Deval Laurdine Patrick (born July 31, 1956 in Chicago, Illinois is an American politician and the Governor-elect of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. On November 7, 2006 Patrick became the first African-American elected governor of Massachusetts, and only the second in United States history. He is scheduled to take office in January of 2007. Prior to entering politics, Patrick worked as an attorney and businessman. He and his wife Diane Patrick have lived in Milton, Massachusetts since 1989. They have two daughters, Sarah and Katherine.
Patrick was born on Chicago's South Side in 1956, into an African-American family living on welfare and residing in a two-bedroom tenement. His father Pat Patrick, a member of jazz musician Sun Ra's band.
After receving his J.D. from Harvard Law School, Patrick worked as a law clerk for Judge Stephen Reinhardt of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, then became an attorney for the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund in New York City. While working with LDF, Patrick met future President Bill Clinton, then serving as governor of Arkansas. Clinton was being sued over a voting rights case, and the two worked out a settlement.
In 1994, Clinton nominated Patrick to be Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights. As an Assistant Attorney General, Patrick worked on a range of issues, including racial profiling, police misconduct, fair lending enforcement, human trafficking, and discrimination based on gender and disability. He led what was before 9/11 the largest federal criminal investigation in history as co-chair of the Task Force appointed to address arsons of Black churches and synagogues in the South. He also played a key role as an advisor to post-apartheid South Africa during this time and helped to create their civil rights laws.
Some gay rights activists have criticized him for his tenure on the United Airlines board. During this time, the company fought a San Francisco ordinance requiring companies to offer domestic partners benefits. Patrick encouraged UAL to offer domestic partner benefits to all employees, becoming the first airline to do so. Patrick contends that for a global company to comply with local employment ordinances in San Francisco would have set an unhelpful precedent.
In 2005, Patrick announced his candidacy for Governor of Massachusetts. He was at first seen as a dark horse candidate, facing veteran Massachusetts campaigners Tom Reilly and Chris Gabrielli in the Democratic primary. The Patrick campaign gained momentum at the Democratic State Caucuses, where it organized their supporters, many of whom had never been involved in such party processes before, to win twice as many pledged delegates as the Reilly campaign. Patrick went on to win the nomination, and faced Massachusetts Lieutenant Governor Kerry Healey whom he defeated overwhelmingly in the November general election. Patrick has become the second elected African-American state governor in United States history, the first being Virginia State Governor Douglas Wilder who was elected in 1989, and the third African-American to serve as a United States state governor, the first being P. B. S. Pinchback, the Senate president pro tempore of Louisiana who ascended to the governorship of Louisiana after the death of Oscar Dunn in 1872.
Patrick opposes the death penalty, saying that "the death penalty does not work. It hasn’t worked in actually deterring crime, and it won’t work for Massachusetts. It’s disappointing to see the governor act like so many other politicians who choose this issue to score political points."[8] This position puts him at odds with Lt. Governor Kerry Healey who would "reinstate the death penalty for felons convicted of killing a law enforcement officer, judge, prosecutor or corrections officer.
Patrick believes immigration is a federal issue and has supported the McCain-Kennedy plan to both tighten border control and create "pathway[s] to citizenship" for immigrants who have established lives in America.[11] On the state level, he supports increased enforcement of employment laws to crack down on employers taking advantage of illegal immigrants, and opposes discrimination on the basis of immigration status for providing state services, including such things as public housing, in-state tuition for public universities, and driver's licenses.