Deval Laurdine Patrick was born in 1956 in the South Side of Chicago. He graduated from Milton Academy in Massachusetts in 1974 and Harvard College in 1978. After working for the United Nations in Sudan, he earned his J.D. from Harvard Law School in 1982.
Patrick began his legal career working as a law clerk for Judge Stephen Reinhardt on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. Throughout the 1980s, he worked at the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund in New York City and in private practice at the Boston law firm Hill & Barlow.
In 1994, President Bill Clinton (D) nominated Patrick for U.S. assistant attorney general in the Department of Justice Civil Rights Division. He served in that role until 1997. Patrick returned to private practice, working as general counsel at Texaco and the Coca-Cola Company.
Patrick served two terms as governor of Massachusetts from 2007 to 2015, becoming the first black governor in the state and the second in the history of the United States.
Patrick announced on November 14, 2019, that he was running in the 2020 presidential election.
