Francis Cecil Sumner

One hundred years ago, Francis Cecil Sumner, from Pine Bluff, Arkansas, became the first African American to receive a doctorate in psychology when he graduated from Clark University in Worcester, Massachusetts. Sumner is widely regarded as the “Father of Black Psychology.” From 1928 until his death in 1954, Sumner was chair of the psychology department at Howard University in Washington, DC. The year Sumner died his student Kenneth B. Clark provided crucial psychological evidence in the US Supreme Court’s landmark Brown v. Board of Education school desegregation decision. You can find out more about the legacy of black psychologists at the conference, “A Centennial Commemoration: Historical Contributions of African American Psychologists from Arkansas,”organized by the Arkansas Association of Black Psychology Professionals, taking place at Philander Smith College on February 28.