Three Black Governors in History. And Two of Them Are From Brooklyn!

When David Paterson takes the helms of state government, he will become the third black governor in the United States since Reconstruction.

The two others are L. Douglas Wilder of Virginia, who left office in 1994, and Deval Patrick, who took office in Massachusetts last year.

And guess what?

Both Paterson [photo, left] and Patrick [photo, right] are from Brooklyn.

Paterson was born here and Patrick lived the formative years of his professional and family life here.

Ask Paterson and he'll gladly let you know that it all started for him in Brooklyn, the place of beginnings for so many Americans over the past five generations who went on to fame or success in other places.

As for Patrick, yes his family roots are in Chicago, but he will happily relate that Brooklyn was his proud home during the 1980s, and it was the birthplace of his wonderful wife Diane Bemus Patrick.

In fact, Diane is Brooklyn Ron's first cousin and she is as proud of the place and her family's connection to it as he is.

At the risk of sounding chauvinist, I have to say, not for nothing do they call it the borough of Kings.

Comments

[Richard Rodriguez]

David Patterson
5/4/08 @ New York Times
4:00pm

http://www.sundaywiththemagazine.com

[Ron]

Now that you make me think about it that way, I'm actually getting more irritated about the idea of congestion pricing and how it, in the way it's proposed now, seems to say: lots of traffic is bad for Manhattan but you people in Downtown Brooklyn can deal with it.

The sense of Manhattan as the center may never die - I and many people I know still call it 'the city' - but I do like the idea of people like Paterson being in power. While he's always linked with the Harlem crowd, I like to believe he has a sense of himself as being hoi poloi - 'one of the people' - in the way Brooklynites think of themselves.

--Ron

[Paul Moses]

Brooklyn Ron,

This is a fine post and it will be interesting to see if David Paterson's more gentle way of operating gets better results than the supposed "steamroller" did.

I don't want to cast a cloud over our Brooklyn pride, but one thing has not changed: The governor, the Assembly speaker, the mayor and the City Council speaker all live in Manhattan, a few miles from each other. If there were the same concentration of powerful pols living within a few miles of each other in any part of Brooklyn, you can bet it would the subject of much media commentary, mostly negative ... But no one seems to think it strange or inappropriate that almost all the top elected officials come from one small county.