Dr. Kenneth Bancroft Clark

Dr. Kenneth Bancroft Clark was born on July 14, 1914 in the Panama Canal Zone to Arthur Bancroft Clark and Miriam Hansen Clark. Arthur Clark was an employee of the United Fruit Company. When Kenneth Clark was just four years of age his parents divorced and his mother moved him and his younger sister to Harlem, New York. Though Miriam Clark worked as a seamstress to provide an income for her family, being a single parent, living in poverty, was not easy, but she provided to care, encouragement and support that her children needed. (obituary)
Kenneth Clark attended mostly black public schools of New York City. During this time period, which was in the early to late 1920s, many African-Americans were not attending four-year universities, but were much more likely going into different trades. Miriam Clark had much higher aspirations for her children at this time. Since Kenneth Clark, himself, was much more interested in books than acquiring a trade, Miriam Clark transferred him to George Washington High School in Manhattan. Kenneth Clark graduated from George Washington High School in 1931 and four years later, in 1935, graduated from Howard University with a bachelor’s and master’s degrees under the direction of Francis Cecil Sumner, the first African- American to receive a doctorate in psychology. (obituary) Kenneth Clark then continued his education and became the first African-American to receive a doctorate degree from Columbia University (Klein). While at Columbia University, Clark met Mamie Phipps, to which they married in 1938. In the following years, much of the research on work Kenneth Clark became involved in was performed side by side with his wife, Mamie Phipps Clark. (obituary).
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...ocial and psychological acceptance could occur if children were taught that acceptance should not be solely based upon the color of your skin. Many factors have contributed to the ideas and contributions Dr. Kenneth B. Clark. The main factor was racial prejudice in America and the false equality he saw that American citizens of color were experiencing and how that impacted their ability to be successful, to have equal opportunity and the development of racial identity.
Dr. Kenneth B. Clark contributed a lot of research, ideas and many first to the world of social psychology. Dr. Clark was a social scientist that influenced the equal opportunity and self-esteem of minority children downfall of segregation of schools. Clark (1950) black children had a well developed understanding of racial difference between “white” and “colored” in reference to skin color.