Kenneth Bancroft Clark

Born: 1914 in Panama Canal Zone
Died: 2005

Education

1940 First Black to receive a Ph.D. in psychology from Columbia.
1941 Taught at Queens College in New York.
1942 Professor of psychology at City College in the City University at NY.
He was a visiting professor at Columbia University, the University of California at Berkeley, and Harvard University.
1962 Founded the Northside Center for Child Development and Harlem Youth Opportunities Unlimited HARYOU.
1967 Founded and was president of the Metropolitan Applied Research Center.
Member of the Board of Trustees of the University of Chicago.
Member of the New York Urban Development Corporation.

His work was essential in the case of Brown v. Board of Education (Topeka, Kansas). He had studied the responses of more than 200 Black children who were given a choice of white or brown dolls. From his findings that the children showed a preference for the white dolls from as early as three years old, Clark concluded that segregation was psychologically damaging. This conclusion played a pivotal role in the decision of the Supreme Court outlawing segregation in education.
Dr. Clark was the first Black president of the American Psychological Association. He was also president of the Society for the Psychological Study of Social Issues.

1961 Awarded the Spingard Medal by the NAACP.
1966 Received the Kurt Lewin Memorial Award by the Society for Psychological Study of Social Issues.
He received honorary degrees from Haverford College, Yeshiva University, Oberlin College, Johns Hopkins University, Amherst College, New York University, Columbia University, and the University of Massachusetts.

Prejudice and Your Child (1965)
The award winning; Dark Ghetto: Dilemmas of Social Power (1965)
He was co-author with Jeannette Hopkins of Relevant War Against Poverty (1968) and co-editor with Talcott Parsons of Negro American (1968)
Pathos of Power (1974)