“To me, the movement was an everyday responsibility in pushing back racism and pushing forward for freedom. The movement was not some extracurricular activity but was an inextricable part of my existence that shaped my very being, my purpose, and my outlook on the world and my role in it.”

Gwen Patton was born in Detroit, Michigan in 1943. She grew up in Detroit, spending her summers with family in Montgomery until the death of her mother. After that, she moved to Montgomery to finish high school and stay with her extended family. She was active in civil rights from an early age, encouraged by her family in Montgomery who were members of the Montgomery Improvement Association (MIA) and activists in their own right. Patton came to Tuskegee to attend Tuskegee Institute (now Tuskegee University) in 1961. Upon her arrival at Tuskegee Institute, she immersed herself in her studies and campus social activities including cheerleading. In January of 1963, however, she was diagnosed with an advanced case of Tuberculosis (TB), and spent the next year in Batson Memorial Sanitarium in Lafayette, Alabama. While she was in the segregated sanitarium, she chafed against the Jim Crow accommodations and advocated for better treatment of the sanitarium’s Black patients such as access to the better food choices offered to whites, library access, and improved sanitation. This experience also strengthened her resolve to fight for desegregation in all areas of life. 

After recovering from TB, Patton returned to Tuskegee Institute in the fall of 1964 and became immediately involved in Tuskegee’s student movement. Tuskegee’s student activists embraced rural and working-class people, challenged segregation with sit-ins, marches, and demonstrations, and challenged the leadership of Tuskegee Institute’s president and the older activists of Tuskegee Civic Association. She was an active member of the Tuskegee Institute Advancement League (TIAL), a student-led movement organization affiliated with Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC). She served as TIAL’s Direct Action chair in 1964 and 1965. TIAL’s activities included sit-ins, wade-ins at public pools, teach-ins, filling out job applications, citizenship schools, and driving rural residents of Macon County to register to vote at the registrars’ office when they were supposed to be in session. Twice a week, she taught citizenship classes to rural residents of Macon County. She also led and participated in civil rights marches. Patton and other representatives from TIAL led a contingent of marchers from Tuskegee to Montgomery on March 10, 1965 (see the March that Wouldn’t Turn Around), and led Tuskegee Institute’s student participation in the Selma to Montgomery March. 

In March of 1965, Patton was elected Student Body President of Tuskegee Institute. She was the first woman to hold that position. As president, she continued to advocate for student participation in activities to advance civil rights and equal citizenship for all people.

During her term as student body president, the town of Tuskegee was shaken by the murder of TIAL/SNCC activist, Tuskegee native, and Tuskegee Institute student, Sammy Younge Jr. Younge was murdered by a white gas station attendant. The next day, 3000 students, faculty, and concerned citizens marched on downtown Tuskegee and appealed to the city council for justice. Patton demanded of the mayor, “We want to know what you are going to do!” The students held marches downtown for the rest of the week. When Sammy Younge’s killer was acquitted of murder, 1,500 students and angry residents marched to Confederate Square and released their anger and frustration - painting the Confederate Solider Monument with black and yellow paint, starting fires in the square, and breaking windows on businesses and the courthouse. 

Patton also worked with SNCC registering and organizing voters in Lowndes County. 

Gwen Patton went on to live, work, and teach in Atlanta, New York, Washington, D.C., as a preeminent Black Feminist scholar and scholar activist. She remained an activist her whole life. She eventually came back to Alabama to to work in Trenholm State College archives where she established a special collection documenting local civil rights pioneers. 

To learn more about her life, view her oral history at the Library of Congress.

Photo (top): Gwen Patton and other students from Tuskegee Institute during a demonstration to protest the murder of Samuel L. Younge, Jr., a civil rights worker. January 1966. (Alabama Department of Archives and History)

Photo (2nd from top): Gwen Patton talking to George Ware at the Tuskegee Institute gymnasium during a meeting held to discuss student demonstrations protesting the murder of Samuel L. Younge, Jr. (Alabama Department of Archives and History)