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Kenneth B. Clark, 1914-2005

Kenneth Bancroft Clark

Black Scholar and Activist

by Marc H. Morial    

President and CEO National Urban League    

Marc H. Morial, President of the National Urban League, is the former two-term Mayor of New Orleans, former President of the U.S. Conference of Mayors, and author of TO BE EQUAL.  He is a Columnist for MaximsNews.com.  Hear his weekly Radio Commentary Online.    See Marc Morial's  bio.    MarcMorial@MaximsNews.com

Please see All of Marc Morial's MaximsNews columns below.*

         UNITED NATIONS -- 4 May  2005 / www.MaximsNews.com Kenneth B. Clark, the renowned psychologist and scholar, who died of cancer 1 May at 90 at his home in suburban New York, was a giant of Twentieth-century Black America and of its struggle for civil rights, the century’s most powerful example of human beings’ quest for freedom.

In that regard, one must hasten to twin his name with that of his wife, Mamie Phipps Clark, who died in 1983 and was also a psychologist of note.

Together, their scholarly work and their testimony in the early-1950s school desegregation trials in Virginia, South Carolina and Delaware formed a significant part of the evidence that produced the unanimous landmark Supreme Court decision of 1954 in Brown v. Board of Education.

That decision, by outlawing school segregation in the South, destroyed the underpinning of legalized racism itself.

In fact, it was Mamie Phipps Clark’s initial studies in graduate school in the late 1930s on self-perception in African-American children that quickly attracted Kenneth Clark’s attention (they were already married) and led to the rich, lifelong collaboration that was to have an extraordinary impact on American society.

The Clarks’ use of coloring tests and dolls, building on the work some scholars had already done, found that black children very early developed the belief that being white was good and being black was bad.

This was the case whether in the North or the South, and it was, as author Richard Kluger noted in his magisterial book on the Brown case, Simple Justice, “true even of the three-year-olds.”

“We were really disturbed by our findings,”  Kenneth Clark told Kluger decades later, “What was surprising was the degree to which the children suffered from self-rejection … I don’t think we had quite realized the extent of the cruelty of racism and how hard it hit … Let me tell you it was a traumatic experience for me as well.” 

It is no doubt difficult for many who only know of today’s American society—in which the rights and the presence of Americans of color is supported not just legally but also culturally as well—to realize how “whitewashed” American society was made to appear before the 1960s. 

Then, there was no place in the larger society blacks could see themselves “reflected” in any but negative terms, and its effect on children’s (and adults’) self-esteem, as the Supreme Court acknowledged, was often devastating.  

Indeed, one can say that the Clarks’ scholarly studies in the 1940s and 1950s of the psychological damage white racism produced in black children not only provided a more rigorous intellectual foundation to the views such scholars and activists as W.E.B. Du Bois had earlier asserted about racism’s full impact.  

It also stimulated a deeper and broader understanding of the effect of bigotry itself on whites as well as blacks.  

That perception reached far beyond academia and the courtroom to become part of the general public discussion about race and racism in America.

The joint career of Kenneth and Mamie Clark was one in which scholarship and activism was informed by the rigorous commitment to the discipline each demanded:  to dispassionate, patient examination, on the one hand; and to passionate and relentless advocacy, on the other. 

Thus, they were representative of the involvement in the African-American freedom struggle of such other scholars, black and white, as Ralph Bunche, Gunnar Myrdal, and John Hope Franklin, whose work bolstered the intellectual attack on the diverse aspects and consequences of notions of white supremacy.

After Brown, the Clarks continued to combine their psychological studies with their activism, becoming deeply involved in educational affairs in New York and elsewhere.

But the black freedom struggle got more complicated after the major legal victories of the Civil Rights Movement had been achieved, and Kenneth Clark spoke of its successes and failures with characteristic bluntness.

For example, he would later say that the contentious community-control of schools experiment in New York City, which he had championed, “did not make a damn bit of difference” in the quality of education the children received.

Still later, on the thirtieth anniversary of Brown, according to the Associated Press, Clark described himself as “bewildered” at the continuing significant resistance among whites to equal opportunity for African Americans, adding that in the 1950s “I seriously underestimated the depth and complexity of Northern racism.”

Nonetheless, for all his disappointment, the debt America and the world owes to Kenneth and Mamie Clark has yet to be fully realized, for all the honors they reaped. 

Their careers, before and after Brown, still offer a shining example that a rigorous commitment to scholarship can be one way to act out the belief that an unyielding commitment to racial equality is the only way America can realize the “self-evident truths” its Founders asserted—and four centuries of African Americans have believed.   

     MarcMorial@MaximsNews.com

*Marc Morial's Columns in MaximsNews 

Kenneth B. Clark  4 May 2005

The State of Black America 11 April 2005

The Main Event in American History  16 February 2005

  Never again!  1 February 2005

  Jack Johnson, American  27 January 2005

  The Mississippi Arrest: Bending Toward Justice... 11 January 2005

  Reforming America's Obsession with Incarceration...  7 December 2004

A Pre-Election Snapshot of Black America...  26 October 2004   

Issues for the Candidates -- and for Us...  19 October 2004

The "Routine" Tragedy in the Sudan...  2 September 2004

A Wonderful Life...  26 August 2004  

America, We Have A Problem...  19 August 2004

Looking Forward; Leaving No One Behind...  28 July 200428 July 2004

Empowering Communities, Changing Lives...  8 July 2004

July: The Other Black History Month...  30 June 2004

Justice for History's Sake—and Our Own...  24 June 2004

Let America Be America The Beautiful...   16 June 2004

Quiet Activism on The Movement's Front Lines...  8 June 2004

Vernon Jarrett, Dreamer and Doer ...  2 June 2004 

Buddy Fletcher's Gift...  26 May 2004

 The Murder of Emmett Till: Still Seeking Justice...  20 May 2004

 The Meaning of the Brown Decision...  12 May 2004

 The Complexity of Black Achievement...  4 May 2004

USA Today's Con Artist...  27 April 2004 

The "Moving Target" of Black Educational Progress ... 13 April 2004

Elaine Jones: Energized by Adversity...  6 April 2004

The Urban League in Washington: Bringing Reinforcements...  30 March 2004

The Pain of Those Left Behind...  17 March 2004

Deeply Desiring Denial...  9 March 2004

One Step Forward; Two Steps Back...  3 March 2004 

Innocent of the Crime, But Almost Executed Anyway...  24 February 2004

Civil Rights: America's Unfinished Business...  17 February 2004

What Will They Do Now?   2 February 2004