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1923, Louise Patterson earns her degree from the University of California, Berkeley. She was born in Chicago, Illinois. She began working as a professor at the esteemed Hampton College, a historically black university in Virginia when she was 22 years old. Patterson moved to New York to become part of Harlem’s burgeoning art scene. She initially worked in social work when she first moved to New York, but later rose to fame in a literary movement.
Although Thompson started one of the first salons in Harlem and orchestrated several rallies, she is most recognized for her close relationship with the novelist Langston Hughes. Both admired the Soviet political system. In 1932, Thompson established the Friends of the Soviet Union group in Harlem.
Thompson was selected by the Communist Party of the United States to lead a group of 22 Harlem authors, artists, and intellectuals in the production of a film about prejudice in the United States for a Soviet film studio. This group included several leading members of the Harlem Renaissance, including the writers Dorsey West and Langston Hughes.
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Thompson and Hughes founded the Suitcase Theater in Harlem, which presented works by Hughes and other black authors and featured All Black actors after the project failed due to lack of funding and demands by American businessmen to break diplomatic ties with the sovietic Union. Thompson and Hughes had returned to the United States at this time. In 1932 Thompson accompanied a group of African-American artists on a trip to the Soviet Union.
After graduation, Patterson became a professor at Hampton College in Virginia, where she organized a student rebellion against the paternalistic laws of the predominantly white administration. Every Sunday afternoon during the protests, black students in the Hamptons performed traditional plantation songs for white guests non-stop.
After that, Patterson lost all his friends in high school. Forced to move to New York City, she quickly became friends with numerous Harlem Renaissance figures. This is the result of her membership and her association with the Urban Institute, which supported her professional career at the New York School of Social Work.
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