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York, and during his U.S. Army years, World War II, he continued to study wherever he was stationed. He attended and received certificates for study from American University st Shrivenham, England; at the campus in Biarritz, France; and become the first Black student at Heidelberg University in Germany.
"The U.S. Army was so segregated," he used to say, "there was little else to do but study." When he returned stateside, he married Fannie Smith and went to work for the Black media as journalism attracted him as an outlet for his voice, his opinion, and his energy. And he liked news people.
He was a reporter for the St. Louis Call and witnessed a share of entertainment and racial history in the process. Canada Lee, the late actor, desegregated, in comedic circumstances, the finest hotel and auditorium in St. Louis. Opera diva Roberta Peters and Marian Anderson followed the actor's refusal to perform before segregated audiences and to insist that the after-performance party in the town's most elegant hotel serve everyone in full view, and not in front of screen. In the 1972 Delegate Mel describes this scene with infinite details, told in his own inimitable style.
When he went to work for the Pittsburgh Courier in New York he was appointed advertising director of the healthy syndicated chain. Again, he was in the right place at the right time. Within the context of the paper's advertising promotions, Mel met Jackie Gleason and Sammy Davis Jr. Gleason wanted Sammy to appear on his television show without the other members of the Will Mastin Trio, and this required both Mel and Sammy to sleep overnight in the theater until the show the next day.
Interested in theater as a youngster, the Harlem YMCA days brought him in touch with Sidney Poitier, Harry Belafonte, and other local celebrities- Dr. Leslie Alexander, a young, spirited basketball player; runner Eulace Peacock, "Pop" Gates, and "Puggy" Bell, who dominated the Renny Basketball Team as city champions.
As the Courier expanded its promotional activities, Mel was the one to do the job. Fearless, unshy, and indominitable, he accomplished what he intended to do. He used his press credentials to maneuver and reconnoiter but the paper's slow demise caused Mel to search elsewhere. He was tapped for public service by Hulan Jack who was elected Manhattan Borough President, and here he found the freedom to exercise his abilities and potential. As Special Assistant to Jack, Mel decided that the city needed a jazz concert. He managed to encourage businesses to support the program, and he obtained Randall's Island without a fee. For two years the summers in New York were highlighted by the Jazz Festival. And from this effort, Mel said: "The Newport Jazz Festival in Rhode Island was adopted."
Inventive and creative, Mel realized his dream as publisher of his own "book." And he exercised his editorial privileges as only he could, in his own enigmatic style. He introduced his annual chronicle of Black progress with these words: 
"When last we met."
Succinctly and lucidly, Mel spelled out the despair, the joy, the status quo in the plain, unembellished English of the journalist and newsman. For example, in 1977 he said: 
"Well, it was a bad year for our side... The Reagan Administration... hell-bent on turning back the clock in Africa, tried to ride out the storm created on South Africa when our Ambassador at the (U.N.) met with some Army General from South Africa. This is supposed to be a no-no."
As a man of universal tastes and interests, Mel participated in African affairs from the time Ambassador Franklin Williams, in the 1960s, was appointed head of the philanthropic Phelps Stokes Foundation. By calling a few friends and supporters, he organized the Committee to Aid African Students which he personally guided for the rest of his life. He invited African students to Oak Bluffs, Massachusetts and entertained them in the spirit of brotherhood and unity, and all with the purpose of showing

[Image of Mel]
Mel in the U.S. Army, serving in the European Theatre.

them a good time while raising funds for their scholarships.
In the 1967 issue of Delegate he advocated an international focus for Black Americans. He said:
".... we deem it a vital necessity to disseminate infrmation [[misspelled]] about the dynamic cultural heritage of people who have contributed so much and a great deal to the development of other cultures."
Astute and widely read history buff, Mel knew what he was talking about. His love for the Continent stemmed from his authoritative studies of African history using the obscure works on the ancient world for his sources. His love of fine art and African art, which he deemed "classical" in an absolute sense as the world adapted its linear figurativeness and stylistic forms. His friendship with Thomas Hoving of the Metropolitan Museum of Art helped him to engineer Black employment at the museum after the controversial exhibition, "Harlem on my Mind" was opened.
Through his ability to meet with Hoving and members of the Board of Directors, Mel and Arnold Johnson, a Harlem businessman, resolved the conflict which had brought picket lines to the stately, august museum.
Artists, writers, and intellectuals picketed the exhibition, but Mel Patrick and Arnold Johnson sought to support Hoving for The Met had never installed a display of Black life in Harlem from the days of its white residents to the renaissance and from the depression to the present day.
Negotiations with Hoving and the Directors resolved the issue and from those meetings Blacks were hired in the museum, and Arnold Johnson was named a Trustee, the first Black so honored. Mrs. Margaret Young, widow of the late Whitney E. Young, Jr., national executive director, National Urban League, is the second Black board member today. This writer became the first Black executive at the museum, and Lowery Sims became the first Black curator in the Twentieth Century Department.
In 1985, Delegate expanded its coverage and number of page to 480. This issue featured obituaries, a practice started in 1979. Tennis tournaments, golf tournaments, Oak Bluffs parties in the summer, and formal dances were included in the format. A more comprehensive editorial philosophy had emerged as sports teams- baseball, basketball, football- were included within the format, and as time went on, more serious attention to civil rights received the lion's share of coverage, usually in Mel's own ingenuous style.
Mel had reasons for this. He conceived Delegate as a

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