Louise Thompson Patterson

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Louise Thompson Patterson (1901-09-09–1999-08-27) was an American social activist and college professor.

Born in Chicago, Illinois, Patterson became a professor at Hampton Institute, a black college in Virginia, by age twenty-two. She left after five years for the burgeoning artistic community arising out of the Harlem Renaissance in New York City. When she first came to the Harlem community she pursued social work, but eventually became a central figure in the movement and married writer Wallace Thurman.

Though Patterson organized a number of protests and opened one of the premiere Harlem salons, she became best known for her close friendship with author Langston Hughes. Both admired the Soviet system of government and organized a group of twenty-two Harlem writers, artists, and intellectuals to create a film about discrimination in America for a Soviet film company. After the project fell through due to lack of funding, Patterson and Hughes returned to the United States to found the Harlem Suitcase Theater, which presented plays written by Hughes and other black writers and featured all-black casts.

For the remainder of her life, Patterson continued to be active in political and social issues. Having divorced Thurman in 1937 and married William L. Patterson, a prominent member of the American Communist Party, she joined her husband in protesting the anti-Communist policies of Senator Joseph McCarthy. In the sixties, she was also involved in the Civil Rights Movement, though by that time her influence was greatly overshadowed by more notable figures. Patterson died of natural causes in 1999, shortly before her ninety-eighth birthday, in Chicago, Illinois.