Clark, Kenneth Bancroft

July 24, 1914

Born in the Panama Canal Zone, psychologist Kenneth Bancroft Clark, the son of Hanson and Miriam Clark, had a direct influence on the U.S. Supreme Court decision in the case of Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas, in 1954. The Court cited Clark's psychological research on race relations in its favorable ruling outlawing segregation. Clark attended Howard University (B.A., 1935; M.S. 1936), and earned a Ph.D. from Columbia in 1940. He had a distinguished career at the City College of New York, where he taught from 1942 to 1975, retiring as professor emeritus of psychology. During his City College career, he also served as visiting professor at Columbia, the University of California at Berkeley, and Harvard. A writer as well as scholar, Clark is the author of Prejudice and Your Child (1955), Dark Ghetto: Dilemmas of Social Power (1965), Crisis in Urban Education (1971), and, with Talcott Parsons, The Negro American (1966). He was also one of the chief organizers of Harlem Youth Opportunities Unlimited. He has been recognized for his scholarship and his contributions to the black community, most notably as the winner of the Spingarn Medal in 1961. Since his retirement from academia, he has served as president of Kenneth B. Clark and Associates, a consulting firm specializing in affirmative action in race relations.

See also Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas ; Spingarn Medal

Bibliography

"Kenneth Bancroft Clark." Notable Black American Scientists. Detroit: Gale, 1998.

Meyers, Michael, and John P. Nidiry. "Kenneth Bancroft Clark: The Uppity Negro Integrationist." Antioch Review 62 (spring 2004): 265.

christine a. lunardini (1996)
Updated by publisher 2005