Ruth Winifred Howard

Born: March 15, 1900
Died: February 12, 1997

Education

1921 B.S. in Social Work from Simmons College in Boston
1927 M.S. degree from Simmons College
1929-1930 Under a Laura Spelman Rockefeller Fellowship for Parent Education she studied at Columbia University’s Teachers College and School of Social Work
1930-1934 Under a second Rockefeller fellowship she studied at the University of Minnesota
1934 Ph.D. in Psychology and child Development from the University of Minnesota

1923-1929 Practiced social work, first in community organization with the Cleveland Urban League and later in child welfare with the State Welfare Agency.
1934 The first Black woman in the United States to receive a Ph.D. in psychology while at the University of Minnesota.
1940-1964 Co-director, with husband Albert S. Beckham, for the Center for Psychological Services in Chicago.
1940-1964 Psychologist for Chicago’s Provident Hospital School of Nursing while consulting with schools of nursing in Kansas City, Missouri, and Jacksonville, Florida.
After a clinical internship at the Illinois Institute for Juvenile Research, she entered into private practice in clinical psychology.
1953-1955 Consultant to adolescents for the Evanston Illinois Public Schools.
1955 Reading therapist at the University of Chicago’s Reading Clinic.
1966-1968 Staff member for Worthington and Hurst Psychological Consultants.
1964-1966 Psychologist for the McKinley Center for Retarded Children.
1968-1972 Psychologist for the Chicago Board of Health, Mental Health Division.
Psychological consultant for children’s programs at Abraham Lincoln Centre and Daniel D. Howard Associates in Chicago.

Her doctoral research, “A Study of the Development of Triplets,” was the first published study of a sizable group of triplets of varying ages from several ethnic groups.

1968 San Antonio, Texas at the HemisFair exposition she was cited for her contribution to Texas culture.
Rockefeller Foundation General Education Board Fellowship