Lucy Patterson

Lucy Patterson was the first African American woman elected to the Dallas City Council. Patterson was a social worker, politician, and professor. Family life and education Lucy Pearl Phelps was born in Dallas, Texas, on June 21, 1931, to John C. and Florence Harllee Phelps. She had one sister, Norma. Her maternal grandfather Norman Washington Harllee served as the principal for the Dallas Colored High School for eleven years and was the first African American man to have a school named after him in 1929. Her mother was a social worker for the Dallas Independent School District and was the first African American faculty member of the Graduate School of Social Work for the University of Texas at Arlington. Patterson attended Booker T. Washington High School from 1942 to 1945, graduating at 14 years old. Although accepted to Howard University, she attended Wiley College Extension until she was 15 and was allowed to enroll at Howard. Patterson was a member of the Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority. She received a Bachelor's in Sociology and Psychology in 1950. She would later take two years off from her professional career to earn a Master's in Social Work from the University of Denver in 1963. On November 25, 1950, she married Albert S. Patterson of Trinidad, West Indies, also a Howard University student, and they moved to Dallas in 1954. Lucy Patterson and her husband had one son, Albert Harllee Patterson, born August 26, 1969, and two foster children, John Austin Joseph and Charlotte Anne Joseph. Patterson died in Dallas on June 15, 2000, and is buried at the Lincoln Memorial Cemetery in Dallas. Political career Lucy Patterson won Place 8 of the Dallas City Council in 1973. She ran as a Democrat against Judy Lott, an Independent African American school teacher, Clay Smothers, a conservative Republican African American newspaper columnist, and Jasper Baccus, an Independent African American businessman. Patterson was the first African American woman endorsed by the Citizen Charter Association (CCA), a council-manager system started in 1930 for improving city governments. Patterson was also endorsed by the political task force Women for Change, Inc., because she committed to "the involvement of more women in management and supervisory positions in the city government, including their appointment to boards and commissions". ]The original election was April 4, 1973, with Patterson winning 21,733 votes, Smothers 13,788, Baccus 4,557, and Lott 4,404.