Gwen Patton

Gwendolyn (Gwen) M. Patton (October 14, 1943 - May 11, 2017) was an activist in the Civil Rights Movement who fought for voting rights. She grew up in Alabama and graduated from G.W. Carver High School and Tuskegee Institute, where she was the first female president of the student government association in 1965. Her many accomplishments that made her an important figure in the civil rights movements began when Patton was a student. Patton was a youth founder of the Alabama Democratic Conference in 1960 and she continued to push students to fight for social, political, and economic change. She graduated with a master's degree from Antioch University. In 1968, Patton founded the National Black Antiwar Antidraft Union, which fought against Black men being drafted in the Vietnam War. She became the director of the Southern Student Human Relations Project in the late 1960s. She also founded the National Association of Black Students in 1969. Throughout her life, Patton continued to fight for civil rights and was deeply involved in politics, specifically during Jesse Jackson’s presidential campaign in 1983-1984, when she served as a delegate. Patton then helped found the Alabama New South Coalition in 1986. She worked at Trenholm State University as the archivist for the Special Collections on Montgomery Pioneer Voting Rights Activists and retired in 2014.