Kenneth clark psychologist biography

1914-2005

Psychologist, educator, writer

Kenneth Bancroft Clark will remain among the nearly prominent black social scientists of description twentieth century. For many years spruce up professor of psychology at City School of New York (now City Institute of the City University of Fresh York), Clark achieved national recognition considering that his work was cited by prestige U.S. Supreme Court in its 1954 ruling that racially segregated schools were inherently unequal and therefore unconstitutional. Cruise decision was a catalyst for prestige civil rights movement of the Decennium, and Clark went on to initiator a series of highly influential books about ghetto life, education, and depiction war on poverty. After retiring steer clear of teaching in 1975, Clark established top-hole consulting firm to assist corporations take other large employers with their ethnological policies and minority hiring programs. Unfinished his death in 2005, Clark high-sounding diligently to pressure American society happening acknowledge the social ills of segregation.

Mother Sought Opportunity
in United States

Clark was born in 1914 in the Panama Canal Zone, the son of Miriam Clark and Arthur Bancroft Clark, span native of the West Indies who worked as a superintendent of truckload for the United Fruit Company. Regardless of the family's relatively comfortable situation funny story Panama, Miriam Clark, a Jamaican lady of stubborn courage, insisted that high-mindedness Clark children should be raised cultivate the United States, where they would get better education and employment opportunities than in Panama. Kenneth and authority sister, Beulah, accordingly moved with their mother to the Harlem district work at New York City when Kenneth was four-and-a-half; their father, however, refused rear relocate to a country where rule color would prevent him from belongings a job similar to his debit with United Fruit. Undeterred, Miriam Adventurer found work in Harlem as boss seamstress and proceeded to raise ethics children on her own.

In later career, Clark became famous as an undeviating advocate of integrated schooling, and importance is not surprising that his insensitive education took place in the culturally diverse setting of 1920s Harlem. Deride that time Harlem was home acquiescence immigrants of various nationalities, especially those of Irish and Jewish origin, suggest was also the center of top-hole rapidly growing black population.

Attending classes burden New York City schools, young Pol was held to the same buoy up standards as his fellow students, eminent of whom were white. As subside told New Yorker magazine many lifetime later, "When I went to ethics board in Mr. Ruprecht's algebra titanic, … I had to do those equations, and if I wasn't biased to do them he wanted dressingdown find out why. He didn't anticipate any less of me because Hilarious was black." That is a nuisance description of the educational philosophy General would maintain for the rest nigh on his life: schools must be ecological to students of every race, point of view teachers must expect the same bringing off from each child. In such unsullied environment, some students will naturally ordain better than others, but not according to racial categories.

When he finished representation ninth grade, Kenneth Clark was mendacious with a critical juncture in tiara education. School counselors advised most coal-black youths to attend vocational high faculty, where they could learn skills fitting to the limited employment opportunities issue to blacks. When Clark's mother heard of this plan she went open to the counselor's office and bass him that under no circumstances would her son go to trade school; she had not come all honourableness way from Panama to raise dexterous factory worker.

Excelled Academically

Instead, Kenneth was connote to George Washington High School, vicinity he excelled in all subjects standing grew especially fond of economics. Blooper had thoughts of becoming an economist until he was denied an grant for excellence in economics by dinky teacher who apparently could not suggest himself to so honor a coalblack student. Clark remembers this as empress first direct experience of discrimination, significant it may well have prepared ethics ground for his subsequent decision meet study psychology, particularly the psychology forfeited racism.

Upon entering Howard University in 1931, Clark originally intended to become exceptional medical doctor. In his second day at the all-black institution he took a class in psychology taught tough Francis Sumner that changed forever dignity course of his studies. "What that professor showed me," Clark told leadership New Yorker, "was the promise search out getting some systematic understanding of high-mindedness complexities of human behavior and individual interaction, …the seemingly intractable nature abide by racism, for example." Clark determined put off he would follow the example decay Sumner in the field of madwoman, and after receiving a master's rank in 1936, he joined the capability of Howard for a year spick and span teaching.

At that point Clark came restrain another critical fork in his pursuit. He could have remained at Queen, teaching with either his master's distinction or a doctorate, but at magnanimity urging of his mentor Sumner stream a number of other outstanding capacity members, Clark went on to University University with the express purpose appreciate obtaining his doctorate and teaching continue to do an integrated college. He became loftiness first black doctoral candidate in mental at Columbia and completed his percentage in 1940.

Clark was married in 1938 to Mamie Phipps, a fellow attitude student at Howard who would writer many of the articles that after made the couple famous. After graduating from Columbia, Clark taught briefly take into account Hampton Institute in Virginia, a observe traditional black college whose most wellknown alumnus was Booker T. Washington. Jazzman was far too conservative a academy for Clark, who left after given term rather than teach a cover up of psychology based on the villeinage of blacks. Following a two-year share with the U.S. Government's Office govern War Information, Clark joined the energy of City College of New Dynasty in 1942, becoming an assistant senior lecturer seven years later and, by 1960, a full professor—the first black canonical to be so honored in representation history of New York's city colleges.

Investigated the Psychology
of Segregation

As a swart psychologist, Clark had always been far downwards concerned with the nature of prejudice, and in the 1940s he status his wife, Mamie, began publishing illustriousness results of their research concerning loftiness effects of segregated schooling on style students in Washington, D.C. Between 1939 and 1950 the Clarks wrote fivesome articles on the subject and became nationally known for their work lecture in the field.

In 1950 Kenneth Clark wrote an article for the Mid-century Grey House Conference on Children and Salad days, summarizing his own work and precision psychological literature on segregation. This account came to the attention of decency National Association for the Advancement holiday Colored People (NAACP) during its post-World War II campaign to overturn authorized segregation. In its landmark 1954 get to the bottom of declaring such segregation unconstitutional, the U.S. Supreme Court cited the Clark voice drift as representative of "modern authority" coverage the subject.

Clark was intimately involved interpose the long legal struggle which culminated in Brown v. Board of Education, as the court's 1954 desegregation vote was titled. He testified as rest expert witness at three of honourableness four cases leading up to blue blood the gentry Supreme Court's review of Brown, folk tale his report on the psychology decay segregation was read carefully by illustriousness justices. Psychological findings were critical get tangled the NAACP's case, in which they asked the court to overturn neat earlier decision (Plessy v. Ferguson, 1896) that "separate but equal" schooling detail the two races did not disobey individual rights under the Constitution.

In Plessy v. Ferguson, the court had engaged that as long as separate schools were of equal quality, they upfront not inherently "deny …the equal assign of the laws" guaranteed by grandeur Fourteenth Amendment. The NAACP challenged position Plessy decision by asserting that, advance reality, separate meant unequal for blacks–especially black schoolchildren. In his testimony formerly one of the lower courts, General defined the harmful effects of hermitical schooling as "a confusion in probity child's own self esteem–basic feelings show consideration for inferiority, conflict, confusion in his self-image, resentment, hostility toward himself." Such object would be felt, Clark and character NAACP argued, regardless of the related merits of the schools involved; secondary, as the court eventually stated, "Separate educational facilities are inherently unequal."

Brown utterly. Board of Education was not nonpareil a milestone in the modern urbane rights movement, it also made Kenneth Clark into something of an lettered superstar. Clark went on to die the most influential black social individual of his generation. He received title only degrees from more than a 12 of the nation's finest colleges post universities, but his larger goal forfeit integrated, adequate schooling for blacks difficult to understand not become a reality even several decades after the announcement of honourableness monumental court decision.

Studied School System engage Harlem

America's schools did not suddenly put together themselves the day after Brown unqualifiedly. Board of Education; in most urbanized areas the growth of black ghettoes only reinforced the segregation of jetblack and white schoolchildren. Clark understood dump in order to improve the tuition of students of color, the Mortal American community as a whole needful to lobby for a massive solution of capital and commitment from say publicly federal government and from private human beings. After sparring unsuccessfully with the Additional York City Board of Education close the late 1950s over issues grounding segregation, Clark was given a one and only opportunity to effect a wholesale restriction of the school system in Harlem. As part of the "Great Society" plans inaugurated by the administrations observe President John F. Kennedy and authority successor, Lyndon B. Johnson, federal capital were provided in 1962 to transcribe Harlem Youth Opportunities Unlimited (HARYOU), primacy task of which was to glance at and suggest remedies for the causes of juvenile delinquency in the Harlem area.

Clark was appointed chairman of HARYOU, which over the next two period produced a 620-page report recommending, in the midst other things, the "thorough reorganization slow the schools" in Harlem. This would include increased integration, a massive document to improve reading skills among session, stricter review of teacher performance, jaunt, most importantly, a high level long-awaited participation by the residents of Harlem in implementing these changes. HARYOU was the first example of what would later be known as a community-action program.

HARYOU was sabotaged by political procession bargaining in New York, and cowed if any of its recommendations were followed. As Clark commented in righteousness New Yorker, "As it turned demonstrate, all we did at HARYOU was to produce a document." Clark's community-based approach inspired many subsequent programs find guilty the "War on Poverty," but clank few exceptions they too fell injured party to the complexities of urban political science. Although his experience with HARYOU mildew be counted as a failure show terms of political reality, it outspoken spur Clark to write the whole for which he is best household, Dark Ghetto: Dilemmas of Social Power. In this work, Clark goes apart from his HARYOU research to write what he describes in the introduction considerably "no report at all, but very the anguished cry of its author"–an overview of black ghetto life delay has become required reading in sociology classes around the country.

In 1967 Pol formed and presided over a nonprofitmaking corporation known as MARC Corp. (the Metropolitan Applied Research Center), composed ransack a group of social scientists bracket other professionals who hoped to discover and solve problems of the city poor. MARC's most significant work was undertaken in 1970, when the primary board of Washington, D.C., asked Psychologist and his associates to design unblended new educational program for the city's 150,000 schoolchildren, 90% of whom were black and the majority of whom were poor.

In an era of vital social and political experimentation, the President, D.C. school system offered Clark birth chance to test his theories longawaited education on a large scale increase in intensity under ideal conditions. Clark outlined graceful program similar to the HARYOU document for New York, calling for unmixed massive and immediate upgrading of datum skills, teacher evaluation based on follower performance, and community involvement in decency schooling process.

Once again, however, real taste proved far more complex than theory: the Washington, D.C. teachers refused give somebody no option but to make their pay and position kill on the outcome of student tests, and a new superintendent of schools (elected in 1971) refused to benefit with the plan and even challenged Clark's central thesis that children dear the ghetto could and should suit expected to perform at "normal" levels. Ghetto life, argued this administrator, was anything but normal, and it would be unfair to hold teachers abide schools responsible for the performance realize students handicapped by living in dignity ghetto.

Such a claim flew in glory face of everything Kenneth Clark esoteric learned and fought for since blooper was a grade school student. Manifestation also contradicted the findings of Brown v. Board of Education : postulate ghetto children could not be restricted to the same standards as further children, then the schools they were attending were obviously not "equal." Clark's defeat at the hands of bureaucratic reality did not dampen his affection in integrated schooling, however; nor exact he cave in to the contention of the politically fashionable black exponent movement in the late 1960s mushroom early 1970s. He opposed the making of any organization based on national exclusivity, including such projects as exceptional black dormitory at the University flaxen Chicago and Antioch College's Afro Land Institute. As a result, Clark was attacked as a "moderate" at spiffy tidy up time of black radicalism, in awful instances receiving personal threats for coronate adamant rejection of racial separatism.

Continued Necessary for
Educational Equality

After his retirement newcomer disabuse of City College in 1975, Clark other his wife and children founded smashing consulting firm called Clark, Phipps, Pol & Harris, Inc., helping large corporations design and implement minority hiring programs. The firm flourished, attracting prestigious patronage such as AT&T, Chemical Bank, take up Consolidated Edison, and Clark remained disobedient in the burgeoning field of marginal concerns in the 1990s workplace.

Back comport yourself 1982, Clark admitted in the New Yorker that the educational outlook was poor for children of color. "Things are worse. In the schools …more black kids are being put relevance the dung heap every year." Fillet wife, Mamie, was even more candid, stating: "More people are without covet now. … I really don't hear what the answer is." Viewing that discouraging prospect eight years later, General admitted that even he was commencement to doubt the possibility of tribal harmony through integration. "I look reduction and I shudder," he told representation Washington Post, "and say, 'Oh Spirit, you really were as naive bit some people said you were.'"

With honesty commitment of U.S. president Bill Clinton's administration to equalize opportunities for collective Americans, Clark continued to voice crown outrage over the country's lack funding educational progress–in academic, social, and irrational terms–but offered a mandate for chalet in the nineties. In a 1993 essay for Newsweek titled "Unfinished Business: The Toll of Psychic Violence," Explorer commented: "We have not yet strenuous education a process whereby students peal taught to respect the inalienable nobleness of other human beings. … [But] social sensitivity can be internalized orang-utan a genuine component of being selfish. This is nonviolence in its truest sense. By encouraging and rewarding dig behavior in all of our children—both minority and majority youth—we will quip protecting them from ignorance and ill-treatment. We will be helping them nurse understand the commonality of being human being. We will be educating them."

Clark exact not live to see his life's work fulfilled, however. The 2002 Harvard's Civil Rights Project "A Multiracial Country with Segregated Schools: Are We Drain the Dream?" described a resegregation round the nation's public schools, finding prowl while "the South remains the nation's most integrated region for both blacks and whites, it is the district that is most rapidly going bankrupt as the courts terminate many higher ranking and successful desegregation orders," according skin the Antioch Review. Clark died instructions his home on May 1, 2005, at the age of 90. On the other hand his legacy lives on. New Royalty journalist Woody Klein collected Clark's extend than fifty years of work disintegration Racial Identity in Context: The Heirloom of Kenneth B. Clark. The piece provides behind-the-scenes stories of Clark's studies of black public school children renounce became the proof behind the Brown v. Board of Education case. Indentation scholarly works provide insight into Clark's contributions to American society and significance field of psychology. He will lay at somebody's door remembered as an unwavering voice admit racism.

Selected writings

Prejudice and Your Child, Gesture Press, 1955, reprinted, University Press work New England, 1988.

(With Lawrence Plotkin) The Negro Student at Integrated Colleges, Practice Scholarship Service and Fund for Treacherous Students, 1963.

The Negro Protest: James Solon, Malcolm X, Martin Luther King Coax with Kenneth B. Clark, Beacon Break down, 1963, published as King, Malcolm, Baldwin: Three Interviews, University Press of Unusual England, 1985.

Dark Ghetto: Dilemmas of Group Power, Harper, 1965, reprinted, University Repress of New England, 1989.

Social and Worthless Implications of Integration in the Universal Schools, U.S. Department of Labor, 1965.

(Editor with Talcott Parsons) The Negro American, Houghton, 1966.

(With Jeannette Hopkins) A Salient War Against Poverty: A Study advice Community Action Programs and Observable Change, Harper, 1969.

(With Harold Howe) Racism stall American Education: A Dialogue and Programme for Action, Harper, 1970.

(Editor with Meyer Weinberg) W. E. B. Du Bois: A Reader, Harper, 1970.

Pathos of Power, Harper, 1974.

Author, with wife, Mamie Phipps, of a series of articles brand the effects of school segregation. Likewise author of numerous articles published blot journals of psychology and sociology.