Deval Patrick: Teddy Stollard & Jean Thompson - Pt 2

This 1996 speech by Deval Patrick was why I supported him for Massachusetts Governor in 2006.

This is roughly the last half of Patrick's speech at Northeastern University on March 31, 1996, part of the Ford Hall Forum lecture series.

Patrick credits the story of Teddy Stollard and Jean Thompson to Marian Wright Edelman. When she tells the story, though, Ms. Edelman credits Elizabeth Ballard. Snopes tells us more:

"This work of fiction was penned by Elizabeth Silance Ballard in 1976 and published that year in "Home Life" magazine. The author's intent was far from unclear, as the piece was clearly marked as fiction, and was presented as such, not as an account of a personal experience.

"Elizabeth Ballard (now Elizabeth Unger) has encountered versions of her story on a number of occasions, as she noted in a 2001 interview with Pittsburgh Post-Gazette reporter Dennis Roddy: 'I've had people use it in their books, except they made it as if it happened to them. In the '80s I heard Robert Schuller tell this story on one of his broadcasts. He told it as if it was someone he knew.'"

There's more on this from Snopes at http://www.snopes.com/glurge/teddy.asp

Deval Patrick was introduced by the Honorable Judge Vivian Beard. The video was produced and edited by Rob McCausland, with cameras by Rob McCausland and Jim Taylor.

Copyright Ford Hall Forum 1996
Ford Hall Forum 617-557-2007
http://www.fordhallforum.org

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