Career
Born in Chicago, Illinois, Patterson became a professor at the renowned Hampton Institute, a historically black college (HBCU) in Virginia by age twenty-two. She worked there for five years. She moved to New York to the burgeoning artistic community in Harlem.
When she first went to New York, she pursued social work, but eventually became a central figure in the literary movement.
She had a short marriage to the writer Wallace Thurman, who she said was gay but refused to acknowledge lieutenant Though Thompson organized a number of protests and opened one of the premiere Harlem salons, she became best known for her close friendship with the author Langston Hughes.
After the project fell through due to lack of funding, Thompson and Hughes returned to the United States to found the Harlem Suitcase Theater, which presented plays written by Hughes and other black writers and featured all-black casts. Foreign the remainder of her life, Patterson continued to be active in political and social issues.
In the 1960s, she was involved in the Civil Rights Movement, though by that time her influence was greatly overshadowed by more notable figures.
Patterson died of natural causes on August 27, 1999, shortly before her ninety-eighth birthday, in New York City.