Carlton Benjamin Goodlett

Born: July 23, 1914 Chipley, Florida
Died: January 25, 1997

Education

B.S. in Psychology from Howard University
Master’s Degree in Abnormal Psychology from the University of California at Berkeley
1938 Ph.D. in Psychology at the University of California at Berkeley
M.D. from Meharry Medical College in Tennessee

1933 First Black to study psychology in the graduate division at the University of California.
1938 Taught educational psychology, learning, and statistics at West Virginia State College.
While at Meharry he taught courses in psychology at Fisk University and Tennessee Agricultural and Industrial College. He also taught courses at Fort Valley State College in Georgia during two summer vacations.
Interned at Homer G. Phillips Hospital in St. Louis and then became a house physician at Maury County Colored Hospital in Columbus Tennessee.
1947 Became first co-publisher of the San Francisco Sun Reporter and then publisher in 1951.
1967-1968 Taught a course at San Francisco State College entitled “Group Conflict in Urban America."
He was president of the San Francisco NAACP, president of the San Francisco Foundation to Study Our Schools, and a director of the San Francisco Council of Boy Scouts of America.
He was a member of the National Committee on Africa.
He also served as chairman of the California Black Leadership Conference, a trustee of the Third Baptist Church, and vice president of the San Francisco Council of Churches.
1966 Ran in the gubernatorial primary election in California, coming in third in a field of six Democrats.
He was a three-time president of the National Newspaper Publishers Association.

He sponsored a three or five year study that examined “The Role of Alcohol, Hard Drugs and Narcotics on the Black Experience”, by the National Newspaper Publishers Association, National Bar Association, National Business League, and the National Medical Association.
Dr. Goodlett and two other physicians were the only Black doctors in San Francisco in the 1940s. For years they were allowed to treat their patients only outside the hospitals. Goodlett led a fight to win access for all Black doctors.
In 1947 he spearheaded the fight against San Francisco's public transit for failing to hire Black workers. Today the workforce at MUNI is over 40 percent African American.
He was elected to the Presidium of the World Peace Council and led American delegations to numerous peace assemblies, including the World Without Bomb Conference in Accra, the Stockholm Conference to End the War in Vietnam and the World Assembly for Peace held in Germany. He also traveled many times to the Soviet Union and other socialist countries and visited Vietnam in 1975.
Dr. Goodlett was arrested at San Francisco State University in 1968 during protests by students demanding a Black studies department.
Dr. Goodlett was an early tireless champion in the AIDS epidemic and served on Mayor Art Agnos’ HIV Task Force in 1990.

“The Mental Abilities of Twenty-Nine Deaf and Partially Deaf Negro Children”
“The Reading Abilities of the Negro Elementary Child in Kanawha County, West Virginia”
“A Comparative Study of Adolescent Interests in Two Socio-Economic Groups”