Albert Sidney Beckham

Born: September 21, 1897 Camden, South Carolina
Died: 1964

Education

1917-1918 Taught as a war professor in psychology at Wilberforce University in Ohio.
1921-1922 Editor of the New York City Dispatch.
1924 He accepted an instructorship at Howard University.
1925-1928 Assistant psychology professor at Howard.
1929-1930 Fellow at the National Committee for Mental Hygiene at the Illinois Institute for Juvenile Research.
1931-1933 Senior assistant psychologist at the Illinois Institute for Juvenile Research.
1935-1964 Affiliated with Chicago’s Board of Education Bureau of Child Study including DuSable High School.
1960-1963 Psychological consultant at Ada S. McKinley Community House in Chicago where he evaluated retarded children, adults, and women in vocational training classes.
He was also a board member of the Chicago Friends of the Mentally Ill and the People’s Rehabilitation Foundation

He conducted research and developed such reports as “Minimum Levels of Intelligence for Certain Occupations” which became a guide for state institutions for training the mentally handicapped.
He counseled thousands of Black youths at DuSable and innovated the services of a school psychology clinic and developed parent counseling groups in which the study of adolescence helped parents to deal with their children. He also brought together ministers whose parishes included families of DuSable students; allowing for the first time a church-neighborhood-school relationship in that community.
The unpublished, “A Study of Retarded Children and Their Mothers” details physical handicaps of retarded children and the relation between child’s and mother’s tested intelligence.
With his wife Dr. Ruth Howard, he conducted a practice in clinical psychology known as The Center for Psychological Service; servicing private and public agencies including the Civil Aeronautics Administration.

Honorary Doctor of Laws degree from Lincoln University

“A Study of Race Attitudes in Negro Children of Adolescent Age”
“A Study of the Intelligence of Colored Adolescents of Different Social Economic Status in Typical Metropolitan Areas” for the Institute for Juvenile Research in Chicago surveyed the largest number of Black children to be included in one study.
“Incidence of Frustration in Counseled and Non-Counseled High School Group”
“Narcolepsy Among Negroes”
“Incidence of Albinism in Negro Families”