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Mamie Phipps Clark

The daughter of an educated family, Mamie Phipps was born in Hot Springs, Arkansas, to Harold and Katie Phipps. Her father was a doctor, a native of the British West Indies. Her mother helped him in his practice and encouraged both their children in education. Her brother became a dentist. Even though Mamie grew up during the Depression and a time of racism and segregation, she had a privileged childhood. Her father’s occupation and income allowed them to live a middle-class lifestyle and even got them into some white-only parts of town. However, Mamie still attended segregated elementary and secondary schools, graduating from Langston High School in 1934. Despite the small amount of opportunities for black students to pursue higher education, Mamie was offered several scholarships for college. Fisk University in Tennessee and Howard University in Washington D.C. were two of the universities to offer Mamie a scholarship and were also two of the most prestigious black universities at that time.

Phipps entered Howard University as a physics and mathematics major, but future husband and partner Kenneth Clark persuaded her to switch; she earned her B.A. magna cum laude in psychology (1938). They began their lifelong partnership and married in 1937. Both went on for additional study at Columbia University.

In 1937, Kenneth was pursuing his doctorate in psychology at Columbia University and Mamie was in her senior year at Howard University. The distance was difficult for devoted couple and they soon secretly eloped. They later had two children together, Kate and Hilton. She also received a graduate fellowship for Howard University’s master’s program in psychology. The summer following her undergraduate graduation Mamie worked for Charles Houston as a secretary at his law office. At the time, Houston was a popular civil rights lawyer and Mamie was privileged to see lawyers such as Thurgood Marshall come into the office to work on important cases. She admits that she didn’t think anything could be done about segregation and racial oppression until after this experience. Believing in a tangible end to segregation inspired Mamie’s future studies whose results went on to aid lawyers, such as Houston and Marshall, win the Brown v. Board of Education Supreme Court Case in 1954.

While working on her master’s degree, Mamie became increasing interested in developmental psychology. The inspiration for her thesis came from working at an all black nursery school. Mamie contacted psychologists Ruth and Gene Horowitz for advice. At the time they were conducting psychological studies about self-identification in young children and suggested that she conduct similar research with her nursery school children. Her husband Kenneth was fascinated by her thesis research and after her graduation they worked together on the research. They developed new and improved versions of the color and doll tests used in her thesis for a proposal to further the research. In 1939 they received a three year Rosenwald Fellowship for their research that allowed them to publish three articles on the subject and also allowed Mamie to pursue a doctoral degree at Columbia University.

During her time at Columbia Mamie was the only black student pursuing a doctorate in psychology and she had a faculty adviser, Dr. Henry Garrett, who believed in segregation. Despite their differences in beliefs, Mamie was able to complete her dissertation, “Changes in Primary Mental Abilities with Age,”. She was the second black person to receive a doctorate in psychology from Columbia University, following her husband Kenneth.

In 1944 she finally found a job through a family friend at the American Public Health Association analyzing research. She stayed at that job for one year but was grossly over qualified for the position and found it embarrassing. She then found a job at the United States Armed Forces Institute as a research psychologist but she still felt pigeonholed. In 1946 Mamie finally found a rewarding job at the Riverdale Home for Children in New York, which looked after the well-being of black, homeless girls.

At the end of World War II, Kenneth and Mamie Clark decided to try to improve social services for troubled youth in Harlem, as there were virtually no mental-health services in the community. Kenneth Clark was then an assistant professor at the City College of New York and Mamie Clark was a psychological consultant doing psychological testing at the Riverdale Children's Association, Kenneth Bancroft Clark and Mamie Phipps Clark approached social service agencies in New York City to urge them to expand their programs to provide social work, psychological evaluation, and remediation for youth in Harlem. None of the agencies took up their proposal. The Clarks "realized that we were not going to get a child guidance clinic opened that way. So we decided to open it ourselves."

Together in 1946 the Clarks created the Northside Center for Child Development, originally called the Northside Testing and Consultation Center. They started it in a one-room basement apartment of the Dunbar Houses on 158th Street (Manhattan)]. Two years later in 1948, Northside moved to 110th Street, across from Central Park, on the sixth floor of what was then the New Lincoln School. In 1974, Northside moved to its current quarters in Schomburg Plaza. It continues to serve Harlem children and their families in the 21st century.

Their goal was to match or surpass the quality of service for poor African Americans. It served as a location for initial experiments on racial biases of education and the intersection of education and varying theories and practices of psychology and social psychology. This was the first center that offered psychological services to minority families in the areas around Harlem.

The center recently celebrated its 60th anniversary of service to the Harlem community. The clinic provides therapeutic and educational support for children ages 5 to 17 and their families. Services include: diagnostic evaluations; individual, group, and family therapy; crisis intervention; tutoring and homework help; after school recreational and cultural activities; and parent education groups.

Mamie remained the Director of the Northside Center for 33 years. Upon her retirement, Dora Johnson, a staff member at Northside, captured the importance of Mamie Clark to Northside. "Mamie Clark embodied the center. In a very real way, it was her views, philosophy, and her soul that held the center together". She went on to say that "when an unusual and unique person pursues a dream and realizes that dream and directs that dream, people are drawn not only to the idea of the dream, but to the uniqueness of the person themselves." Her vision of social, economic, and psychological advancement of African American children resonates far beyond the era of integration.

Mamie didn’t limit her contributions to her work, she was also a very involved member of the community. She was on the Board of Directors for several community organizations, along with being involved with the Youth Opportunities Unlimited Project and the initiation of the Head Start Program.