Early Life and Education
Patrick was born on the South Side of Chicago, where his family resided in a two-bedroom apartment in Robert Taylor Homes housing projects. In 1959, his father, Laurdine "Pat" Patrick, a member of jazz musician Sun Ra's band, left Patrick's mother, Emily Mae (née Wintersmith), Deval, and their daughter, Rhonda (who is one year Deval's senior) in order to play music in New York City and because he had fathered a daughter, La'Shon Anthony, by another woman. Deval reportedly had a strained relationship with his father, who opposed his choice of high school, but they eventually reconciled. Patrick was raised by his mother, who traces her roots to American slaves in the American South, in the state of Kentucky. The family spent many months living on welfare.
While Patrick was in middle school, one of his teachers referred him to A Better Chance, a national non-profit organization for identifying, recruiting and developing leaders among academically gifted minority students, which enabled him to attend Milton Academy. Patrick graduated from Milton Academy in 1974. After high school, Patrick became the first person in his family to attend college. He graduated from Harvard College with an A.B. cum laude in English and American literature in 1978. He then spent a year working with the United Nations in Africa. In 1979, Patrick returned to the United States and enrolled at Harvard Law School. While in law school, Patrick was elected president of the Harvard Legal Aid Bureau, where he first worked defending poor families in Middlesex County, Massachusetts.
Patrick graduated from Harvard Law School with a J.D. cum laude in 1982. He proceeded to fail the State Bar of California exam twice but ended up passing the California bar on his third try. Patrick then served as a law clerk to Judge Stephen Reinhardt on the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit for one year. In 1983, he joined the staff of the NAACP Legal Defense Fund (LDF), where he worked on death penalty and voting rights cases. While at LDF, he met Bill Clinton, then the governor of Arkansas, when he sued Clinton in a voting case. In 1986, he joined the Boston law firm of Hill & Barlow and was named partner in 1990, at the age of 34. While at Hill & Barlow he managed high-profile engagements such as acting as Desiree Washington's attorney in her civil lawsuit against Mike Tyson.
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