John Malcolm Patterson - Later Life

Later Life

From the late 1970s through the late 1980s, Patterson taught American government at Troy University in Troy, Alabama. During part of this time, George Wallace, Jr., was an administrator at the school. And the former California Superintendent of Public Instruction, Max Rafferty, headed the education department.

In 1984, Patterson was appointed to the Alabama Court of Criminal Appeals, at which he remained until his retirement in 1997.

In 2003, Patterson was appointed chief justice of a Special Supreme Court that tried the case of Alabama Chief Justice Roy Moore, who appealed his removal from office after he had refused to remove a monument of the Ten Commandments from the courthouse despite orders from a federal court judge to do so. The special court ruled that Moore's removal was legal. In 2012, Moore is again the Republican nominee for Alabama chief justice.

A 90-minute documentary film on Patterson was completed in 2007 by Alabama filmmaker Robert Clem. Entitled John Patterson: In the Wake of the Assassins, the film features an extended interview with Patterson himself as well as with journalists, historians. and such key figures as John Seigenthaler of Tennessee, aide to Robert Kennedy at the time of the Freedom Rides.

Having long since recanted his previous segregationist views, Patterson endorsed Barack Obama in the 2008 presidential election. On the day before Obama was sworn in, Patterson said that during his era, support for integrating the public schools was a political non-starter in Alabama.

An authorized biography of John Patterson entitled Nobody but the People, written by historian Warren Trest, was published in 2008 by New South Books.