Mamie Phipps Clark

Mamie Phipps Clark was an American social psychologist who, along with her husband Kenneth Clark, focused on the development of self-consciousness in black preschool children. Clark was born and raised in Hot Springs, Arkansas.[1] Clark received her post-secondary education at Howard University and earned her bachelor's and master's degrees there.

Mamie Phipps Clark
BornApril 18, 1917
Hot Springs, Arkansas
DiedAugust 11, 1983
New York, New York
Resting placeMount Hope Cemetery Hastings-on-Hudson, New York, USA
EducationB.A. in Psychology, Howard University

M.A. in Psychology, Howard University

Ph.D. in Psychology, Columbia University
OccupationSocial psychologist
Known forPsychology Research supporting 1954 U.S Supreme Court case Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas
Spouse(s)Kenneth Clark

For her master's thesis, known as "The Development of Consciousness of Self in Negro Pre-School Children," Clark worked with black Arkansas preschool children.[2] This work included doll experiments that investigated the way African American children's attitudes toward race and racial self-identification were affected by segregation. It was found that children who attended segregated schools preferred playing with white dolls over black dolls. The study was highly influential in the Brown v. Board of Education court case.[3] It brought light to the effects of racial segregation on school-age children. Mamie Phipps Clark died in 1983 at the age of 66.

Early life

Born on April 18, 1917, in Arkansas, Mamie Phipps Clark attended highly segregated schools. Phipps's father, Harold H. Phipps, born in the British West Indies, was a well-respected physician and a manager of a resort.[4] Though Katy Florence Phipps, Phipps's mother, was a homemaker, she was often involved in her husband's work as a physician. Her younger brother became a dentist.

Mamie Phipps Clark described her elementary and secondary education as deficient in substantive areas. However, although her school was racially segregated, she retrospectively commented that the combined experience of segregation and a supportive, extended family shaped her career satisfaction later in life. Her mother did not need to work to supplement the family income. Clark stated,

“I had a very happy childhood. I really did. We were comfortable. How can I tell you I had a happy childhood? I enjoyed everything. I enjoyed school. I loved school. I enjoyed recreation. I enjoyed the little traveling we did. I was very happy. I can’t say it was impoverished, or—for me, it was privileged. For me. Now, by objective standards, I would guess you would say it was just an average family. But it was a very privileged childhood.” (as cited in Lal, 2002, p. 1)

Clark graduated from Langston High School, even though it was very uncommon for a black student to do so. She received two offers and scholarships from top colleges, Fisk University and Howard University. She enrolled at Howard in 1934. Despite her attending college during the Great Depression, her father was able to send her $50 per month. She majored in math and minored in physics. It was highly unusual for black women to receive an education in those departments at the time.

At Howard, Mamie Phipps Clark would meet her future husband, Kenneth Bancroft Clark, who was a master's degree student in psychology. It was Kenneth Clark who urged her to pursue psychology because it would allow her to explore her interest in working with children. Mamie Phipps Clark and Kenneth Bancroft Clark eloped during her senior year in 1937. In 1938, Mamie Phipps Clark graduated magna cum laude from Howard University. The summer after her graduation Phipps worked as a secretary in the law office of Charles Houston. There she witnessed the work of William Hastie, Thurgood Marshall, and others in preparation for the court challenges that would lead to the landmark 1954 decision Brown v. Board of Education. This had an influence on her master's thesis, "The Development of Consciousness of Self in Negro Pre-School Children."[5]

Mamie Phipps Clark was the first African American woman to earn her Ph.D. in experimental psychology in 1943 from Columbia University. Phipps Clark's dissertation adviser was Henry E. Garrett, later president of the American Psychological Association. He is noted as an exceptional statistician but also an open racist. Later on in her career, she was asked to testify in the Prince Edward County, Virginia, desegregation case in order to rebut his testimony offered in that court in support of inherent racial differences.

After graduation, she experienced a lot of frustration career-wise. She attributed this to the “unwanted anomaly” of being a Black woman in a field dominated by white males. One instrumental role was a job in 1945 conducting psychological testing for homeless black girls for the Riverdale Home for Children. This spurred her desire to open the Northside Child Development Center.

Doll study

Phipps Clark's doll study was a continuation of the work she did for her master's thesis. It was inspired by Ruth and Gene Horowitz’s work on “self-identification” in nursery school children. Her master’s thesis spurred her husband's interests in the area and served as the basis of their later collaborative work on the racial preferences of Black children. She opted not to publish her thesis because she thought it was exploitative to publish with a professor. She reportedly told her husband that they would do it together.

The experiment played a key role as evidence in the court challenge that led to the Supreme Court's Brown v. Board of Education decision in 1954, by proving that segregation caused psychological harm to children. Mamie Phipps Clark had conducted the experiment with her husband, Kenneth, 14 years earlier. Findings from this study were the first social science research to be submitted as hard evidence in the Court’s history.

The study used four dolls identical in all ways except color. It was administered to children ages 3–7, asking questions to identify racial perception and preference.[6] The following questions were asked:

"Show me the doll that you like the best or that you'd like to play with."

"Show me the doll that is the 'nice' doll."

"Show me the doll that looks 'bad.'"

"Give me the doll that looks like a white child."

"Give me the doll that looks like a colored child."

"Give me the doll that looks like a Negro child."

"Give me the doll that looks like you.""

The experiment revealed a preference for the white doll for all of the questions and attributed positive attributes to the white dolls. The Clarks concluded that "prejudice, discrimination and segregation" caused black children to develop a sense of inferiority and self-hatred. Phipps Clark concluded, “If society says it is better to be White not only White people but Negroes come to believe it. And a child may try to escape the trap of inferiority by denying the fact of his own race.” The original experiment led the way to other experiments conducted by Phipps Clark and her husband. Phipps Clark interviewed three hundred children from different parts of the county where schools were segregated and found the same results.

Within the doll experiment, Phipps Clark also gave the kids outlines of a boy and a girl and told them to color the outlines the same color as themselves. It was found that the black kids colored themselves white or yellow.

The conclusion of the doll tests and the segregation tests was that segregation in schools had a negative effect on children. The dolls were all identical the only difference was the skin tone of the doll.

The Northside Center for Child Development

In February 1946, Mamie Phipps Clark founded the Northside Center for Child Development in the basement of the Paul Lawrence Dunbar apartments, where her family lived. It was funded by a loan of $946 from Mamie's father, Harold Phipps. It was first called the Northside Testing and Consultation Center. It became the Northside Center for Child Development in 1948. The Northside Center for Child Development was the first center to provide therapy for children in Harlem. As well as helping children who needed therapy, the center provided support to families who needed housing assistance. The prevailing therapeutic approach at the time was psychoanalysis. However, they dismissed the effectiveness of psychoanalysis with the population served by the center. The Clarks felt the center had to provide what was identified as missing for their clients. They preferred a more comprehensive holistic approach. The center later expanded services to include psychological consultations for behavior problems due to emotional disturbances, vocational guidance for adolescents, education in child training for Black parents, and various psychological testing. Today services include remedial reading and math tutoring services, nutritional workshops, and parental training. Dr. Mamie Clark remained active as the director of Northside until her retirement in 1979.

Harlem Youth Opportunities Unlimited project (HARYOU)

She continued to collaborate with her husband on numerous projects including the Harlem Youth Opportunities Unlimited project (HARYOU), to provide education and employment opportunities for the youth in Harlem. It was established in 1962 with the help of Kenneth Clark and other community leaders. HARYOU provided corrective/remedial education for impoverished youth who were falling behind in school, provided job opportunities for Black youth, and taught residents how to work with government agencies to obtain funds and services. Kenneth Clark proposed busing to integrate schools, but protests from parents on both sides prevented fruition. HARYOU later merged with Associated Community Teams as part of Lyndon B. Johnson’s War on Poverty initiative. It was renamed HARYOU-ACT. The Clark's involvement with the agency was short-lived due to political conflicts. Dr. Kenneth Clark published conclusions from work with HARYOU in a book called Dark Ghetto (1965)

Personal life

Mamie Phipps and Kenneth Clark married in 1937. Mamie Clark said that the collaboration between her and her husband resulted in “a lifetime of close, challenging and professionally satisfying experiences”. The Clarks were married for 45 years until Mamie Clark’s death on August 11, 1983. They had two children, Kate Harris and Hilton Clark.

Clark was very active in her community. She served as chairman of a housing company that built apartments in NYC. She also served on the board of the American Broadcasting Companies, the Museum of Modern Art, the New York Public Library, New York Mission Society, The Phelps Stokes Fund, and Teachers College at Columbia University. Additionally, she served with advisory groups including the National Headstart Planning Committee.

Legacy

Clark's work on the impact of racial discrimination and stereotypes provided important contributions to the field of developmental psychology and the psychology of race. She worked as a research psychologist for the United States Armed Forces Institute and the Public Health Association. Her effort on the identity and self-esteem of blacks expanded the work on identity development.

Clark is not as famous as her husband. It has been noted that she adhered to feminine expectations of the time and often took care to "remain in the shadows of her husband's limelight". She often presented as shy. She has been praised for achieving success professionally while maintaining the satisfaction of a fulfilling home life. She received a Candace Award for Humanitarianism from the National Coalition of 100 Black Women in 1983.[7]

Clark died of cancer on August 11, 1983, at 66 years of age.

gollark: Does anyone?
gollark: It might be for Verilog.
gollark: On Macos, yes.
gollark: It *cannot* compile really fast, the compiler is a horrible assemblage of broken regices, the automatic memory management just leaks, C to V translation has not been demonstrated to work usefully.
gollark: The claims they make are utterly lies.

See also

References
  1. "Featured Psychologists: Mamie Phipps Clark, PhD, and Kenneth Clark, PhD". apa.org. Retrieved 2016-06-07.
  2. Karera, Axelle. "Mamie Phipps Clark". Psychology's Feminist Voices. Retrieved 2016-06-07.
  3. "Mamie Katherine Phipps Clark (1917–1983)". Encyclopedia of Arkansas. Retrieved 2016-06-07.
  4. "Notable New Yorkers". columbia.edu. Retrieved 2016-06-07.
  5. "Mamie Phipps Clark". faculty.webster.edu. Retrieved 2016-06-07.
  6. "Brown at 60: The Doll Test | NAACP LDF". naacpldf.org. Archived from the original on 2018-09-13. Retrieved 2016-06-07.
  7. "CANDACE AWARD RECIPIENTS 1982-1990, Page 1". National Coalition of 100 Black Women. Archived from the original on March 14, 2003.
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