September 27, 1921

Alabama Gov. John Patterson was born in Goldville, Alabama, in Tallapoosa County, on Sept. 27, 1921. Patterson’s father, Albert, was a school principal before changing careers and opening a law office in Phenix City. The younger Patterson went off to fight for five years in World War II, winning the bronze star. He returned to college and was married after the war. In the 1950s, the elder Patterson was fighting organized crime rings in Phenix City. Running for attorney general of Alabama, Albert Patterson was murdered outside his law office in 1954. John Patterson replaced his father on the ballot and easily won election. In 1958, Patterson was among 14 candidates in the competition to succeed Big Jim Folsom as governor. When Patterson was inaugurated at 37, he was the youngest man to have held the office. He pledged better schools and new highway projects. In 1959, Patterson assented to secret CIA plans to use Alabama National Guard pilots for training Cuban civilian pilots for an assault against Fidel Castro’s government. Patterson supported John F. Kennedy for president and led Alabama’s delegation at the Democratic National Convention. Patterson informed Kennedy about the Bay of Pigs plan, a version of which Kennedy later approved as president, to disastrous results. Patterson’s term as governor ended with a $2 million deficit. Because he couldn’t succeed himself at the time, he left office. Patterson went on to serve on the Alabama Court of Criminal Appeals until his 1997 retirement. When Roy Moore was removed from the state Supreme Court in 2004, Patterson was tapped to head a special court created to hear his appeal. Afterward, he retired to his farm in Goldville.

Read more at Encyclopedia of Alabama.

John Patterson (1921-) became Alabama attorney general in 1954 following the assassination of his father, Albert Patterson, who had vowed to end vice and corruption in Phenix City. A populist, John Patterson was elected as Alabama’s governor on his anti-civil rights record and with the backing of the Ku Klux Klan, serving from 1959-63. (From Encyclopedia of Alabama, courtesy of Alabama Department of Archives and History)

Lt. Gen. Henry Graham, left, Alabama Gov. John Patterson, center, and Alabama highway director Sam Englehardt, c. 1960. Graham was a top Alabama National Guardsman during the 1960s whose duties included removing George C. Wallace from his stand in the schoolhouse door in Tuscaloosa in 1963. Patterson and Englehardt leveraged construction contracts to push education reforms through the Legislature. (From Encyclopedia of Alabama, courtesy of Alabama Department of Archives and History)

John Malcolm Patterson and his then-wife, Mary, with Gov. George Wallace in the 1970s. (BankofKnowledge, Wikipedia)

For more on Alabama’s Bicentennial, visit Alabama 200.