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Frederick Douglas Patterson (born 1871- died 1932) was an American entrepreneur, the first African American to manufacture cars, and known for the Greenfield-Patterson automobile of 1915, built in Ohio. He later converted his business to the Greenfield Bus Body Company. While in college at Ohio State University, he was the first African American to play on its football team. He returned to Greenfield to join his father in his carriage business, which became C.R. Patterson and Sons. The younger man saw opportunity in the new horseless carriages, and converted the company in the early 1900s to manufacture automobiles, making 150 of them. Later he shifted to making buses and trucks, and renamed his company as Greenfield Bus Body Company. After Patterson's death in 1932, his son kept the business going through much of the Great Depression, finally closing it in 1939. ==Early life and education== Named after the noted abolitionist, Frederick Douglas Patterson was born in 1871 as the youngest of four children〔(''Black Firsts: 4,000 Ground-breaking and Pioneering Historical Events'' ), edited by Jessie Carney Smith (1994); 2nd edition, Visible Ink Press, 2003, pp. 78-79〕 of Josephine Utz (aka Outz) and Charles Richard Patterson. He had an older brother Samuel. Their father was an ex-slave who had escaped to Greenfield, Ohio from West Virginia shortly before the American Civil War. After getting established as a blacksmith in town, Charles had married Josephine Utz, a young local white woman.〔(Reginald Larrie, Black History Feature: "He Was Owner of an Auto Factory" ), ''Baltimore Afro-American,'' 8 August 1980, accessed 5 May 2013〕 By the time Frederick was born, his father had a successful carriage business with a partner. The Pattersons encouraged the education of their children: Samuel, two daughters, and Frederick. Frederick graduated from the old Greenfield High School in 1888 and went on to Ohio State University. While at the university, he played on the football team in his junior year in 1891, the first African American to do so. He withdrew from college in his senior year before graduating, taking a job as a high school history teacher in Louisville, Kentucky. It was a different career than his father's business, where his older brother was already working. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Frederick Patterson」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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