Welcome to Litsy!

A good introduction to both scientific racism in the field of psychology and the contributions of black psychologists to the development of the field.

“On January 12, 1954, Dr. Francis Cecil Sumner suffered a fatal heart attack while shoveling snow at his home in Washington, D.C. President Mordecai W. Johnson of Howard University delivered the eulogy at the University Chapel, and a tribute was paid by J. St. Clair Price, Dean of the College of Liberal Arts at Howard. There was a military honor guard, in memory of Sumner‘s service in World War I, as he was buried at Arlington Cemetery...”

“Her [Ruth Winifred Howard] civic affiliations included being a board member of the YWCA of Chicago, Women‘s International League for Peace and Freedom, American Association of University Women, and the National Association of College Women. She was a member of International House Association, Art Institute of Chicago, Hyde Park-Kenwood Community Conference, and Delta Sigma Theta sorority.”
Many early black psychologists had a record of civic duty

“The World War II German ‘race betterment‘ movement with its belief that a ‘super race‘ could be bred was a derivative of an insidious entanglement between nativistic psychology and the ‘science‘ of eugenics.”

So much of the early history of psychology both in Europe and America is entangled with racist ideology.

“Even the Rat Was White exposes this unfortunate past, sets it firmly behind us, and makes it possible for psychology to organize itself as a true scientific discipline. Psychology and all of us owe congratulations to Dr. Guthrie for his original insight and for the dramatic beam of light he has brought into darkness.”