Mamie Phipps Clark, PhD
April 18, 1917 – August 11, 1983
The first African-American woman to earn a doctorate degree in psychology from Columbia University. American social psychologist that focused on the development of self-consciousness of pre-schooled black children, along with her husband Kenneth Clark. Her thesis research help to stop segregation in schools in the highly influential to the Brown vs. Board of Education court case.
Dr. Clark, who was born in Hot Springs, Arkansas on April 18, 1917, to British West Indies native Harold H. Phipps, a physician, and Kate Florence Phipps, who assisted in his practice. Phipps’s only sibling, her younger brother, Harold, became a dentist.
Phipps attended a segregated public elementary and the segregated Langston High School, graduating in 1934 and winning scholarships to Fisk University in Nashville, Tennessee, and Howard University in Washington DC. She elected to attend Howard to study mathematics and physics, departments that were not particularly supportive of her as a student, possibly due to prejudices against women entering such fields at the time.
She earned both her bachelor’s and master’s degrees from Howard University. Beig there a llowed her to come up with her master’s thesis, known as ” The Development of Consciousness of Self in Negro Pre-School Children.” This is where she met Kenneth her life long partner in the research field of Psycology effects on the black community. She graduated from Howard in 1938, married the same year and received her master’s degree from Howard in 1939. The Clarks moved to New York City, where her husband in 1940 and she in 1943 became the first blacks to receive doctorates in psychology from Columbia University.
Her experience in college and specifically graduate level courses helped Clark realize the shortage of psychological services available to the African American community and other minorities. Two groups of students were used in this experiment, black students from a segregated school in Washington DC and desegregated school in New York. The students from each school was presented a doll, the doll was identical except for hair and skin color, one was black, one was white. They were then asked which doll they rather play with and which one looks nicer? It was found that the kids would rather play with white doll than the black doll. Her groundbreaking research on the impact of race on child development helped end segregation and was influential in desegregation efforts including the Brown vs. Board of Education in 1954.
Her dedication and passion for adequate mental health services for all prompted Dr. Clark to open her own agency to provide comprehensive psychological services to the poor, blacks, and other minority children and families. 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