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Presidential Medal of Freedom Recipient
Dr. Frederick Douglas Patterson
FREDERICK D. PATTERSON
Awarded by
President Ronald Reagan
June 23, 1987
For five decades, as president and president emeritus of Tuskegee Institute, Dr. Frederick D. Patterson has been one of America's outstanding educators. He is also the founder of the United Negro College Fund and the College Endowment Funding Plan, and through these, he has helped finance excellence throughout America's community of historically black colleges. By his inspiring example of personal excellence and unselfish dedication, he has taught the Nation that, in this land of freedom, no mind should be allowed to go to waste.
(1901-1988)
The distinguished educator Dr. Frederick Douglass Patterson became the first African American member of the American Red Cross Central Committee in 1946. Three years earlier he had founded the United Negro College Fund. In l933 he had been appointed the third president of Tuskegee Institute in Alabama, the historically black college founded in l88l by Booker T. Washington. In this 1946 photograph, Dr. Patterson (left) is shown talking with American Red Cross Chairman Basil O’Connor, (right) who was also chairman of the Tuskegee Board of Directors and Jesse O. Thomas, special assistant to the director of Domestic Operations of the American Red Cross. Dr. Patterson continued his association with the Red Cross serving on its Board of Governors from l957-60. In June l987, he received the highest civilian recognition in America, the Medal of Freedom, from President Ronald Reagan.
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Medal History
