Tullibody Academy was a school for African Americans in Hale County, central western Alabama.
With this support and much hard work, Paterson gradually "won the respect and admiration and aid of the best people of that portion of the South."
By September, 1873, Paterson (probably aided by one or more assistants) was planning to offer reading, writing, arithmetic, geometry, music, drawing, Latin, Greek, German, French, Spanish, Hebrew, chemistry, and philosophy.
In 1877, a local paper, The Alabama Beacon, judged the Tullibody Academy "among the better Negro schools."
On July 26, 1878, Paterson left Tullibody Academy to accept the Presidency of the State Normal School and University for Colored Students and Teachers in Marion, Alabama.