Patricia A. King

Patricia A. King (born June 12, 1942) is an American lawyer, educator and civil rights activist who is a professor of law emeritus at Georgetown University Law Center and an adjunct professor in the School of Hygiene and Public Health at Johns Hopkins University. Her expertise lies at the intersection of law, medicine, ethics, and public policy. In 1979, she became the first African-American woman law professor to receive tenure at Georgetown.

Early life and education King grew up in the Roberts Park and later Liberty Park public housing developments in segregated Norfolk, Virginia. Her mother, Grayce King, worked as a secretary and her father, Addison King, was a newspaperman, working first for the Norfolk Journal and Guide and later for the Pittsburgh Courier. She has cited her early life experience with Norfolk's mixed-race health clinics as a source of her interest in race, medicine, and equity, recalling the indignity with which she was treated during routine doctor's visits. King eventually secured another scholarship and graduated with honors in 1963 with a Bachelor of Arts in Religion and Philosophy.

In 1966, King attended Harvard Law School, where she received her Juris Doctor degree in 1969. During that time, she worked as an administrative intern and budget analyst at the United States Department of State. She was admitted to practice in the District of Columbia Bar on November 4, 1969, and was later admitted to practice by the Supreme Court of the United States on June 30, 1980.

Career King began her career working in civil rights. From August 1969 to October 1971, she served as the Special Assistant to the Chairman of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. In this work, she has advocated for the perspective of marginalized communities—including low-income, disabled, and racial and ethnic minority communities—who have an earned mistrust of the biomedical research community. She has also studied and lent her expertise to housing policy and interventions against family violence. In addition to teaching and scholarly research, she served on a number of councils and committees throughout the course of her career. The commission was formed after the revelations around the Tuskegee syphilis study and was the first national body working to address biomedical ethics and informed consent. King believed she was chosen to join the commission for her background in civil rights and her participation in the Commission marked the beginning of her career in bioethics and the law. In 1980, she was appointed by President Jimmy Carter to the President's Commission for the Study of Ethical Problems in Medicine and Biomedical and Behavioral Research, which was active until 1983.

King's experiences led to her involvement in the National Institutes of Health's (NIH) Recombinant DNA Advisory Committee, where she served from 1979 to 1981. In 1989, she was appointed to the Joint Working Group on Ethical, Legal and Social Implications (ELSI) of Human Genome Research, which formed that year to coordinate programs run by the NIH and the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE). The ELSI Working Group issued its first report in January 1990 setting forth a function and purpose for the program to anticipate problems and identify solutions to mapping the human genome. King served on the ELSI group through 1995. In addition, she served on the Advisory Committee to the Director of the National Institutes of Health from 1990 to 1994 during the tenure of Bernadine Healy.

Leadership From 2000 to 2005, she chaired Wheaton College's Board. From 2006 to 2012, she served as a member of the President and Fellows of Harvard College (Harvard Corporation), becoming the first African-American woman to serve on the governing board of Harvard University. She has also served as the Vice Chair of the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation from 1999 and Vice Chair of the Russell Sage Foundation.

In 1991, she testified at Clarence Thomas's Supreme Court nomination hearing, citing his opposition to affirmative action, as well as his positions on wage discrimination, class action litigation, and other interventions against gender and racial discrimination, as reason to reject his nomination. Honorary Doctor of Humane Letters, Old Dominion University, 2009 Sandra Day O'Connor Board Excellence Award, DirectWomen Institute, 2007 Honorary Doctor of Laws, Wheaton College, 1992 Elected Member, National Academy of Medicine, 1992 Secretary's Special Citation, United States Department of Justice, 1973

Personal life King married Roger Wilkins, an African-American civil rights leader, professor of history, and Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, in the early 1980s. Together, they have one daughter, Elizabeth Wilkins, who worked on Barack Obama's first campaign for president in 2008.