Born: July 24, 1914, Panama Canal Zone

Education: Howard University, B.A., 1935, M.A., 1936; Columbia University, Ph.D., 1940

Died: May 1, 2005, New York, NY

Inspired by his Howard professors, who “made their students into instruments of change” (Willie and Greenblatt, 1981, p. 155), Clark led student protests against Jim Crow and later earned graduate degrees in psychology. Using social science research to promote social justice, he became a nationally respected expert on child personality and school desegregation.

He and his wife, Dr. Mamie Clark, established Northside Child Development Center in Harlem (1946); their inquiries supported the need for stable black families. Home environment critically impacted learning, they found. Race relations in communities influenced children's self-esteem as well.

Clark was pivotal among the scholars who assisted NAACP counsel in contesting segregated schools. In 1950 the Clarks conducted studies showing that separate schooling harmed the social development of children regardless of race. Counsel argued this in a Charleston, South Carolina federal court (1951). The Clarks also experimented with a black doll and a white doll, noting the responses of more than 200 black children. Their palpable preference for the white doll revealed a negative self-image. This proved crucial: the Supreme Court's Brown decision, stating that it “generates a feeling of inferiority” in Negro children, overturned school segregation. Afterward, Clark worked to implement racial and curricular integration in New York public education.