Clark, Kenneth Bancroft (1914-2005), an African American educator and psychologist, became known for his studies on school segregation and its effects on students. The Supreme Court of the United States referred to his work in its 1954 desegregation ruling, which declared that “separate but equal” schools for Black students are actually unequal and therefore unconstitutional.
From 1939 to 1941, Clark participated in a study of Black Americans by the Swedish sociologist and economist Gunnar Myrdal. Clark became the first African American to receive a permanent appointment as a professor at the City College of New York, where he taught psychology from 1942 to 1975. He served for many years as a consultant to the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). In 1961, Clark was awarded the NAACP’s Spingarn Medal for his achievements in psychology.
Clark was born on July 24, 1914, in the Panama Canal Zone. He earned a Ph.D. degree from Columbia University in 1940. Two of his books are Desegregation: An Appraisal of the Evidence (1953) and Dark Ghetto (1965). Clark died on May 1, 2005.
