Mamie Phipps Clark

Mamie Phipps Clark (October 18, 1917 – August 11, 1983) was a 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.

Clark received her post-secondary education at Howard University, and she earned her bachelor's and master's degrees there.

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.

This work included doll experiments that investigated the way African American children's attitudes toward race and racial self-identification were affected by segregation.

According to the study, 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.

It shed light on the effects of racial segregation on school-age children.

Clark's experiences with segregation led her to become a civil rights activist in her community and provide for the youth.

Born on October 18, 1917, in Hot Spring, Arkansas, Mamie Phipps Clark attended highly segregated schools, including a Catholic elementary school.

Phipps's father, Harold H. Phipps, born in the British West Indies, was a well-respected physician and a manager of a resort.

Phipps's mother, Katy Florence Phipps, was a homemaker and she was often involved in her husband's work as a physician.

As a result, she did not need to work to supplement the family income.

Her younger brother became a dentist.

Mamie Phipps Clark described her elementary and secondary education as deficient in substantive areas.

Her school was racially segregated and she commented that the combined experience of segregation and a supportive, extended family shaped her career satisfaction later in life.

Clark stated:

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 University, Mamie Phipps Clark met 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.

Phipps once stated "I'd always had an interest in children. Always from the time I was very small. I'd always thought I wanted to work with children, and psychology seemed a good field."

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.

After she immediately enrolled in Howard University's psychology graduate program.

For her master's thesis, she studied when black children became aware of themselves as having a distinct "self," as well as when they became aware of belonging to a particular racial group.

She defined "race consciousness" as the perception of self-belonging to a specific group, which is differentiated from other groups by obvious physical characteristics.

Her conclusions about African American children became the foundation and the guiding premise for the famous doll studies which her and her husband would later become very well known for.

Phipps confessed that it was not until the end of her undergraduate years that she finally became confident about creating solutions for segregation and racial oppression.

The summer after her graduation Phipps worked as a secretary in the law office of Charles Houston, who was a prominent lawyer and leading civil rights figure at a time when segregation cases were being taken up by the national Association for the Advancement Colored People legal defense fund.

Clark was the first Black woman to earn her Ph.D. in experimental psychology, which she did in 1943 from Columbia University.

She returned to student life with the vivid and optimistic idea that an "actual tangible approach" could be used to further her research and findings about African American children.

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.

As she later noted: "I can't even remember the names of them all, but they converged in his office to prepare these cases and that was the most marvelous learning experience I ever had- in the whole sense of really, blasphemy, to blacks, was brought very clearly to me in that office."

This had an influence on her master's thesis, "The Development of Consciousness of Self in Negro Pre-School Children," which would later be responsible for the research and experiments which influenced the Supreme Court Case, Brown v. Board of Education.

"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 black prestigious universities, Fisk University and Howard University.