Deval Laurdine Patrick (born July 31, 1956) is the Governor of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. He is the first African American to hold that office. A member of the Democratic Party, Patrick served as United States Assistant Attorney General under President Bill Clinton.

Patrick was born on the South Side of Chicago, where his family resided in a two-bedroom apartment in Robert Taylor Homes housing projects. In 1959, his father Laurdine "Pat" Patrick, a member of jazz musician Sun Ra's band, left his wife Mae (née Wintersmith),, their son Deval, and their daughter, Rhonda (who is one year Deval's senior) in order to play music in New York City and because he had fathered a daughter by another woman. Deval reportedly had a strained relationship with his father, who opposed his choice of high school, but they eventually reconciled. Patrick was raised by his mother, Mae, who traces her roots to American slaves in the American South, in the state of Kentucky.

While Patrick was in middle school, one of his teachers referred him to A Better Chance, a national non-profit organization for identifying, recruiting and developing leaders among academically gifted students of African American descent, which enabled him to attend Milton Academy. Patrick graduated from Milton Academy in 1974 and from Harvard College (with a concentration in English and American literature) in 1978. He then spent a year working with the United Nations in Africa. In 1979, Patrick returned to the United States and enrolled at Harvard Law School. While in law school, Patrick was elected president of the Harvard Legal Aid Bureau, where he first worked defending poor families in Middlesex County, Massachusetts.