No turning back: Dr. Kenneth B. Clark, who marshaled the science of psychology to move the Supreme Court, held onto his faith in integration

Black Issues Book Review, Jan-Feb, 2006 by Fred Beuford

I MET THE WORLD-RENOWNED PSYCHOLOGIST, educator and civil rights activist Dr. Kenneth Bancroft Clark only once, and then, rather briefly. But it was a highly memorable first meeting. I was the editor of The Crisis, the official magazine of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), and our meeting was at one of its functions in New York City. I distinctly remember asking Dr. Clark, who died on May 1, 2005, at the age of 90, in a short but intense conversation in the hotel lobby, how did he think things had turned out in terms of race relations.

Dr. Clark had been one of the most pivotal figures in the landmark 1954 United States Supreme Court Brown v. the Board of Education of Topeka decision outlawing school segregation. It was his famous study of black children's reactions to black dolls and white dolls, developed with the help of his wife, Mamie--that showed that black children rejected the black dolls in disgust, over and over again--that helped persuade the justices that state-enforced apartheid had a detrimental effect on black children's self-esteem.

"I don't think we did well" he answered.

"I think we totally underestimated how entrenched racism was in this country. I know I did"

I was somewhat taken aback, both by the chilling absoluteness of his answer and by the very real sadness with which he expressed himself. And to this day, I am convinced that I saw a small tear form in his eye.

If, indeed, it was a tear--as I will go to my grave suspecting that it was--I would have understood. After all, this was 1990 America. The word "integration," which had meant so much to him, had long been turned into a hate word on par with other such profoundly pregnant American hate words such as "Uncle Tom;' "nigger lover" "self-hating Jew" "anti-Semite" and "sexist:'

Black leaders, induding my good friends at the NAACP, and the intelligentsia of all stripes and colors, would have chosen instead to slit their wrists and denounce their mamas in public rather then utter such an awful word.

Plenty of Blame

Dr. Clark, however, as all the obituaries in the major newspapers of this country made dear, remained a diehard integrationist, and that was why, in the end, he thought that much of what he worked so hard for had failed, and the reason why that genuine sorrow I witnessed that afternoon in 1990 has stayed with me.

As The Los Angeles Times so rightly noted in its obituary: "To the end, Dr. Clark remained committed to integration, although he grew more pessimistic. For this, in part, he blamed neoconservative whites who, he thought, had betrayed the civil rights struggle; those blacks who thought they could succeed in isolation from whites; politicians of both races who made empty promises; and defeatists who came to think that integration and real racial harmony were 'too difficult to achieve.'"

Kenneth B. Clark was born in 1914 in the Panama Canal Zone. As a small child, he immigrated with his family to Harlem. Clark's mother was a strong-willed person who insisted that her son get a good education. When a junior high-school counselor once had the unmitigated gall to advise her to send him to a vocational school, she replied that she didn't come all the way from Panama to see her son grow up to do menial labor.

As a result, Dr. Clark attended the prestigious George Washington College Preparatory High School. He then enrolled at Howard University, receiving a Bachelor of Science degree in 1935 and a master's in 1936. At Howard, he studied with such towering black intellectuals as Sterling Brown, Ralph Bunche and Main Locke, but he was most profoundly influenced by the psychiatrist Francis Cecil Sumner. It was also at Howard where he met his future wife, Mamie Phipps.

A Scholar for All

Dr. Clark was the first African American to earn a doctorate in psychology at Columbia University, to hold a permanent professorship at the City College of New York, where he taught for 33 years. He was also the first black to join the New York State Board of Regents and to serve as president of the American Psychological Association. He also assisted corporations with racial policies and minority hiring programs.

Dr. Clark was also a highly prolific writer. His 25 books include Prejudice and Your Child (Wesleyan University Press; revised 2nd edition, 1988), the classic Dark Ghetto: Dilemmas of Social Power (Wesleyan University Press, 1989), A Possible Reality (Emerson Hall, 1972) and Pathos of Power (HarperCollins College Division, 1974). His beloved wife of so many years, Mamie began studying self-perception in black children as a graduate student at Howard University. from 1939 to 1940, the two published three major articles on this subject. Mamie Phipps Clark continued her work at Columbia where, in 1943, she became the first African American woman and the second African American (after her husband) in the university's history to receive a doctorate in psychology.

Whatever one thinks of the concept of integration, Dr. Kenneth B. Clark was absolutely right about one thing: a nation-state based on separation of the races is inherently evil, as America once was. And by helping bring an end to such a state, all Americans owe him our utmost, secure gratitude and a debt of thanks. We should be thankful that such a person once walked among us.