|  Two interviews are available here.
In the first interview, recorded in February 2006, Alan Chartock spoke with then civil rights attorney and businessman Deval Patrick, who was running for the Massachusetts Governor. Patrick would go on to become the first elected African-American governor in Massachusetts history and its first Democratic executive since Michael Dukakis. Alan asked Deval about his up-by-the-bootstraps background, his opinion of outgoing governor Mitt Romney and why a blue state like Massachusetts hadn't elected Democratic governors in recent years.
In the second conversation, from November 2007, Governor Patrick reflects on his first year in office.
About Deval Patrick
From the South Side of Chicago to the highest levels of government to the boardrooms of two Fortune 500 companies, Deval Patrick has lived the American dream. Through almost four decades of that journey, the values, institutions, and people of the Bay State have been fundamental to his success.
Born in 1956, Deval grew up in one of Chicago's toughest neighborhoods, living on welfare and sharing a single bedroom with his mother and sister.
First in his class in middle school, Deval's potential was recognized by a teacher who recommended him to A Better Chance, a Boston-based organization that awarded him a scholarship to Milton Academy in Milton, Massachusetts.
After graduating from Milton in 1974, Deval attended Harvard College, the first in his family to be formally educated beyond high school. When he called home to tell his family he had been admitted, his grandmother paused in her excitement and asked, "Where is that anyway?" Of that comment, Deval says, "it was the opportunity, not the prestige that mattered."
Graduating from Harvard with honors in 1978, Deval then lived and worked in Africa for a year, most of that time on a United Nations youth training project in the Darfur region of Sudan. While abroad, he applied and was admitted to law school and returned to Cambridge to attend Harvard. There, he was elected president of the Legal Aid Bureau and gained his first trial experience defending poor families in the Middlesex County Courts. He also won the prestigious Ames Moot Court Competition and was named best oral advocate in his class.
In 1994, President Clinton appointed Deval Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights, the nation's top civil rights post. Deval worked on a wide range of issues at the Justice Department including the investigation of church burnings throughout the South in the mid-1990s, prosecution of hate crimes and abortion clinic violence, cases of employment discrimination, and enforcement of the Americans with Disabilities Act.
Restoring Faith:
A commitment to the principles and ideals that work to benefit all of the citizens of the Commonwealth. Deval has served on several charitable and corporate boards, as well as the Federal Election Reform Commission under Presidents Carter and Ford, and as Vice Chair of the Massachusetts Judicial Nominating Council by appointment of Governor Weld. He is the recipient of seven honorary degrees, including from Clark University in Worcester, Suffolk Law School in Boston, Northeastern University School of Law in Boston, and Curry College in Milton.
2/24/06 Conversation
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11/08/07 Conversation
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