Patton has written for
The Baltimore Sun,
Al Jazeera,
BBC America,
The New York Times,
The Washington Post,
The Dallas Morning News, NewsOne, and
The Root. She is also author of the books ''Spare the Kids: Why Whupping Children Won't Save Black America'' published by Beacon Press., "Not My Cat," a children's book published by Simon & Schuster, and the forthcoming "Strung Up: How White America Learned to Lynch Black Children (Beacon Press). Patton, a former senior enterprise reporter for
The Chronicle of Higher Education, was previously a professor of multimedia journalism at
Morgan State University's School of Global Journalism and Communication and founder of the anti-child abuse movement Spare the Kids, Inc. She is a research associate professor at Morgan State University and she teaches journalism at Howard University in Washington, D.C. In 2012, Womanspace of
Mercer County, New Jersey, a nonprofit organization that provides help for victims and survivors of domestic and sexual violence, awarded its annual
Barbara Boggs Sigmund Award to Patton. She has won reporting awards from the William Randolph Hearst Foundation, National Association of Black Journalists, the Scripps Howard Foundation, National Education Writers Association, and she was the 2015 recipient of the Vernon Jarrett Medal for her reporting on race. Also in 2012, Patton published an article in
The Chronicle of Higher Education challenging scholars and students in the fields of Black/African-American studies to address the "gap" of discussing taboo subjects – such as "black sexual agency, pleasure and intimacy, or same-sex relationships" – within the aforementioned fields. In 2017, the Black Studies Department at the
University of Missouri dedicated its annual Black Studies Fall Conference to the discussions brought up in Patton's article. Patton is also the author of the memoir
That Mean Old Yesterday, was published by
Simon & Schuster. ==Charlie Kirk controversy==