The African Studies Program mourns the loss of Adell Patton, who passed away last week of congestive heart failure after successfully surviving a long struggle with cancer.
Dr. Patton received his Ph.D. in African History from UW-Madison in 1975 before teaching at Howard University and the University of Missouri-St. Louis for a total of more than forty years. His interests spanned a number of fields of African and African American history, including Northern Nigeria, medicine, slavery, frontiers, the back to Africa movement, and Liberia.
Dr. Patton lived an inspiring life that followed a remarkable trajectory from the son of sharecroppers in the Mississippi Delta to respected professor. He will be sorely missed in the African Studies community.