Frederick Douglass Patterson was an American academic administrator, the president of what is now Tuskegee University (1935–1953), and founder of the United Negro College Fund. He was a 1987 recipient of the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation's highest civilian honor, and 1988 recipient of the Spingarn Medal from the NAACP.

Tuskegee University is a private, historically black land-grant university in Tuskegee, Alabama. It was founded on Independence Day in 1881 by the Alabama Legislature.