Deval Laurdine Patrick is the 71st and current Governor of Massachusetts. A member of the Democratic Party, Patrick served as an Assistant United States Attorney General under President Bill Clinton. He is the state's first African American governor and the second African American to be elected governor of any US state. Born and raised by a single mother on the South Side of Chicago, Patrick won a scholarship to Milton Academy in Massachusetts in the eighth grade. He went on to attend Harvard College and Harvard Law School, where he was President of the Harvard Legal Aid Bureau. After... graduating he practiced law with the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund. He later joined a Boston law firm, where he was named a partner at the age of 34. In 1994, President Bill Clinton appointed Patrick Assistant Attorney General for the Civil Rights Division of the Department of Justice, where he worked on issues including racial profiling and police misconduct. Patrick returned to Boston in 1997 to work in private law.
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