Joseph Turner Patterson (1907-1969) was the thirty-fourth

Attorney General of Mississippi The Attorney General of Mississippi is the chief legal officer of the state and serves as the state's lawyer. Only the Attorney General can bring or defend a lawsuit on behalf of the state. The Attorney General is elected statewide for a four-yea ...

Early life and education

Patterson was born July 10, 1907 in

Eupora, Mississippi Eupora is the largest city in Webster County, central Mississippi. The population was 2,197 at the 2010 census. History Eupora was established in 1889 by European Americans on a spur track of the Georgia Pacific Railway. While there had been agr ...

Mississippi Mississippi () is a state in the Southeastern region of the United States, bordered to the north by Tennessee; to the east by Alabama; to the south by the Gulf of Mexico; to the southwest by Louisiana; and to the northwest by Arkansas. Miss ...

Public service

In 1930, Patterson was elected city attorney of Calhoun, Mississippi. In 1932, he was elected to the Mississippi House of Representatives. In 1936, he joined the staff of Senator

Pat Harrison Byron Patton "Pat" Harrison (August 29, 1881June 22, 1941) was a Mississippi politician who served as a Democrat in the United States House of Representatives from 1911 to 1919 and in the United States Senate from 1919 until his death. Early li ...

. In 1962, Patterson cooperated with the Kennedy administration to register

James Meredith James Howard Meredith (born June 25, 1933) is an American civil rights activist, writer, political adviser, and Air Force veteran who became, in 1962, the first African-American student admitted to the racially segregated University of Mississ ...

to attend Ole Miss. In 1968, he represented the state's interests in ''

Coffey v. State Educational Finance Commission ''Coffey v. State Educational Finance Commission'' (1969) was a federal case that addressed state support of segregation academies in Mississippi. More broadly, it established the standards the Internal Revenue Service would use to determine the t ...

''. This case marked the end of state subsidies to

segregation academies Segregation academies are private schools in the Southern United States that were founded in the mid-20th century by white parents to avoid having their children attend desegregated public schools. They were founded between 1954, when the U.S. ...

References

*''Joe T. Patterson and the White South's Dilemma: Evolving Resistance to Black Advancement'' , - {{DEFAULTSORT:Patterson, Joseph 1907 births 1969 deaths Mississippi Attorneys General Mississippi Democrats Mississippi College alumni Cumberland School of Law alumni People from Eupora, Mississippi