AFRICAN AND HISPANIC AMERICANS IN PSYCHOLOGY

African Americans and Hispanic Americans in the field of Psychology

African Americans and Hispanic Americans in the field of Psychology

Introduction

A careful study of African Americans within the field of psychology will reveal that there has been an ongoing struggle among African American psychologists to have African American people evaluated by culturally appropriate standards rather than by standards of the dominant culture. An ongoing theme among African American psychologists has been that African American culture is different from the majority culture, but “different” does not mean inferior.

Contributions of African Americans to the Field of Psychology

The purpose of this work is to explore the history of African Americans in the field of psychology and to highlight the contributions that African Americans have made to the field. One might argue that there were three periods with respect to African Americans in the field of psychology. In the initial phase, African Americans focused on survival; later, many African Americans developed a more Afrocentric orientation; and finally, African Americans used a combination of traditional methods and Afrocentric principles to better understand people of African descent in an American society. In 1920, Cecil Sumner (Sawyer, 2000) received his Ph.D. and became the first African American to be awarded a doctoral degree in psychology from an American university. Although Sumner is an important figure in psychology and in African American history, he is rarely mentioned in introductory psychology textbooks. When one considers the context in which Sumner earned his Ph.D., one realizes that he earned his degree against incredible odds. Sumner was born in 1895—one year before the 1896 Plessy v. Ferguson court decision upholding the policy of “separate but equal” (Guthrie, 1998).

In 1920, the year in which he earned his Ph.D., slavery had only been abolished for slightly more than 50 years. Only 11 Blacks had earned Ph.D.s between the years of 1876 and 1920, compared with 10,000 Caucasians (Guthrie, 1998). Cecil Sumner was able to earn his Ph.D. in psychology against almost impossible odds because of his superior academic abilities (Guthrie, 1998; Sawyer, 2000). Sumner received his elementary education through several school systems in Virginia, New Jersey, and the District of Columbia. At the high school level, his parents decided to home school him, as they were not satisfied with the type of education offered in segregated school systems. He apparently received a superior education through home schooling, because he excelled in his university coursework, graduating from Lincoln University as valedictorian of his class (Sawyer, 2000). At about the time that Sumner received his undergraduate degree, he began corresponding with James P. Porter, the dean and professor of psychology at Clark University, who encouraged him to apply to the university. The president of Clark University was Stanly Hall (Guthrie, 1998), a renowned child psychologist. Hall had views about diversity that were quite liberal at the time. He taught pedagogy at Howard University and encouraged students at Howard and other historically Black universities to apply to ...