Kenneth Bancroft Clark: The Uppity Negro Integrationist

Abstract

M ay 17 marks the fiftieth anniversary of the United States Supreme Court's most famous school desegregation decision-Brown v. Board of Education; on that date in 1954 the nation's High Court said, unanimously: . . To separate [Negro children] from others of similar age and qualifications [in the public schools] solely because of their race generates a feeling of inferiority as to their status in the community that may affect their hearts and minds in a way unlikely ever to be undone.... It was psychology's moment in the spotlight, and social psychologist Kenneth Bancroft Clark's greatest triumph. Clark's research on segregation's harmful effects on the personality development of children was the lead evidence the Court cited in its infamous Footnote 11 to support its conclusion that the only way to end inequality between blacks and whites in the public schools was to ban government's involvement with and enforcement of racial separation. NAACP lawyers were referred to Dr. Clark when they wanted to know whether there existed in the 1950s any social science that would help them persuade federal judges to declare segregated schooling per se injurious to the Negro plaintiffs in segregated schools and therefore unconstitutional. Columbia University-trained black psychologist had done exactly the kind of research that the NAACP had hoped existed; in 1950, Clark had presented his paper, The Effect of Prejudice and Discrimination on Personality Development, at a Midcentury White