Contributions of African Americans to the Field of Psychology

Introduction

A very careful study of African Americans inside the area of psychology will disclose that there has been an ongoing labour amidst African American psychologists to have African American persons assessed by heritage befitting measures other than by measures of the superior culture. An ongoing topic amidst African American psychologists has been that African American heritage is distinct from the most heritages, but “different” does not signify inferior.

 

Contributions of African Americans to the Field of Psychology

The reason of this work is to discover the annals of African Americans in the area of psychology and to focus the assistance that African Americans have made to the field. One might contend that there were three time span with esteem to African Americans in the area of psychology. In the primary stage, African Americans concentrated on survival; subsequent, numerous African Americans evolved a more Afrocentric orientation; and eventually, African Americans utilised a blend of customary procedures and Afrocentric values to better realise persons of African fall in an American society. In 1920, Cecil Sumner (Sawyer, 20) obtained his Ph.D. and became the first African American to be bestowed a doctoral stage in psychology from an American university. Although Sumner is an significant number in psychology and in African American annals, he is seldom cited in introductory psychology textbooks. When one considers the context in which Sumner acquired his Ph.D., one recognizes that he acquired his stage contrary to unbelievable odds. Sumner was born in 1895—one year before the 1896 Plessy v. Ferguson court conclusion supporting the principle of “separate but equal” (Guthrie, 198).

In 1920, the year in which he acquired his Ph.D., slavery had only been eradicated for somewhat more than 50 years. Only 11 Blacks had acquired Ph.D.s between the years of 1876 and 1920, in evaluation with 10,000 Caucasians (Guthrie, 98). Cecil Sumner was adept to profit from his Ph.D. in psychology contrary to nearly unrealistic odds because of his better learned natural forces (Guthrie, 19; Sawyer, 200). Sumner obtained his elementary learning through some school schemes in Virginia, New Jersey, and the District of Columbia. At the high school grade, his parents determined to dwelling school him, as they were not persuaded with the kind of learning suggested in segregated school systems. He evidently obtained a better learning through dwelling schooling, because he excelled in his university coursework, graduating from Lincoln University as valedictorian of his class (Sawyer, 20). At about the time that Sumner obtained his undergraduate stage, he started corresponding with James P. Porter, the dean and lecturer of psychology at Clark University, who boosted him to request to the university. The leader of Clark University was Stanly Hall (Guthrie, 21), a renowned progeny psychologist. Hall had outlooks about diversity that were rather liberal at the time. He educated pedagogy at Howard University and boosted scholars at Howard and other historic Black universities to request to Clark. Sumner was acknowledged at Clark throughout the jump of ...