Melvin Glenn "Pat" Patterson was born to Idella (Jarett) and Lee Patterson in Springfield, Missouri, one of ten children. He briefly played minor league baseball in southern Missouri and had a lifelong interest in Negro League baseball.

In 1953 Patterson left heavily segregated Springfield for more racially progressive Topeka, Kansas. He attended the Kansas Technical Institute (KTI), known as the Tuskegee of the West. He married fellow student Maxine Walls later that year.

The school closed in 1955, but Patterson and his wife were active in the alumni association that held biennial reunions and awarded scholarships to the descendants of alumni. Patterson built part of his house, was a leader of the Sunrise Optimists Club, and spent his entire career at the Topeka Water Department.

Melvin and Maxine Patterson had four children: Lori, Vickie, Valerie, and Melvin, Jr. Melvin "Pat" Patterson passed away on September 7, 2020.

[Information pulled from Melvin Patterson’s obituary, Topeka Capital-Journal, Sepember 27-28, 2020.]

The Kansas Vocational School in Topeka, Kansas, was founded in 1895 by two local African American school teachers, Edward Stevens and Izie Redick, as The Industrial and Educational Institute (TIEI), coming out of the national influence of Booker T. Washington's advocay for African American vocational schools. Initially comprised of a kindgergarten, sewing classes, and a reading room, the school began receiving state funds in 1899. A year later, Booker T. Washington, who was president of the school's Board of Trustees, appointed William R. Carter, a graduate of Tuskegee Institute in Alabama, to serve as the principal of the school. Over the years, its vocational programs offered preparatory training in teaching, nursing, theology, agricultural studies, printing, tailoring, carpentry, music, home economics, and auto mechanics.

In 1919 the institute was made a state school under George R. Bridgeforth at the State Board of Administration. The name changed to the Kansas Vocational School (KVS) in 1925, and in 1939 it was placed under the Board of Regents. In 1943, when Western University in Quindaro, Kansas was closed, its vocational programs were transferred to the Topeka school, which then became the Kansas Vocational College (KVC).

The school began accepting all qualified students in 1950, and in 1951 the name changed to the Kansas Technical Institute (KTI). KTI granted its first college diploma in 1954, the same year that the Supreme Court ruled in Brown v. Board of Education that segregation was unconstitutional. Though KTI was integrated with 97% African American students and the rest white students, the Kansas state legislature ordered the school to close in 1955. Equipment and books belonging to the school were transferred to other schools, including the University of Kansas and Kansas State University. The site was transferred to the corrections department and the Topeka Correctional Facility was opened on the grounds in the 1970s.

[Information pulled from collection materials and from Kenneth Spencer Research Library, "Kansas Vocational School" brochure, available online at http://hdl.handle.net/1808/32536.]