A Brief Biography of Mamie Phipps Clark

1178 Words3 Pages

Mamie Phipps Clark was born on April 18, 1917 in Hot Spring, Arkansas. Mrs. Clark was brought up knowing a professional lifestyle. Her father Harold H. Phipps was an African American, who was a physician and was more than able to support his family of four rather easily. Her mother Katy Florence Phipps, was a homemaker who was very involved in her husband's medical practice. Mamie had explained that being an African American in the early 1930’s and living in the South was far from easy, even for the middle class family that she came from. “My father was a well-respected black person, and it was a phenomenon that is not really unusual in the South, that even in the highly segregated situations, you will have a few blacks that are permitted to cross certain lines. For example, to go to certain stores and to be waited on. Not restaurants, but stores with merchandise. My father was one of those people. We had certain access to certain kinds of things, like merchandise stores, drug stores, variety stores, that other people didn’t have, or that other people didn’t take advantage of. You were always aware of which way you couldn’t go and what you could do and what you couldn’t do, so you knew there was a real chasm, really, between the races.” (The “Other Half” 2009). Clark graduated from Langston High School at seventeen, and despite the extremely low opportunities available to black students, Mamie was offered several different scholarships to pursue higher education. Amongst her scholarships opportunities were offers for two of the most respected and prestigious black universities in the country at that time. She had an opportunity to attend Fisk University which is in Tennessee and another opportunity at Howard University which ... ... middle of paper ... ...working towards alleviating completely even today. It is sad to know that children were subjected to such ignorance and that back then there wasn’t much anyone thought to do to stop it from happening. References Axelle Karera (2010) Psychology’s Feminist Voices Retrieved from: http://www.feministvoices.com/mamie-phipps-clark/ MacKay, J. (2010). Profile of Bonnie Strickland. In A. Rutherford (Ed.), Psychology's Feminist Voices Multimedia Internet Archive. Retrieved from http://www.feministvoices.com/bonnie-strickland/ Giving children security: Mamie Phipps Clark and the racialization of child psychology. Lal, Shafali, Yale U, Program in American Studies Mamie Phipps Clark: The "Other Half" of the Kenneth Clark Legacy. Gibbons, William1 Van Nort, Sydney C.2 http://c250.columbia.edu/c250_celebrates/remarkable_columbians/kenneth_mamie_clark.html

Open Document