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The Black American Music Symposium series (2.75 linear feet) documents a national symposium held in Ann Arbor on August 9-15, 1985, at the time billed as the first of its kind nationally. The symposium involved many of the most important scholars and performers of Black music in America, including Undine Moore, Hale Smith, Kermit Moore, Billy Taylor, Eva Jessye, among many others. As director of the symposium, Patterson had extensive planning and correspondence duties, which are documented in this series. Included are form letters and invitations, as well as personal requests for attendance and financial support, planning materials, staff lists, programs, posters, handouts and drafts of schedules and participants. This series also contains a considerable amount of funding and finance documentation, such as interactions with the Michigan Council for the Arts, the National Endowment for the Arts, the National Endowment for the Humanities, and grant requests to private corporations. The series contains biography files for some symposium participants. A few of these files include correspondence to and from Patterson.

Consult the Photographs and Related Material series for photographs of the symposium.