Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Review Method: Peer Reviewed
Abstract: During this 50th anniversary of school desegregation under the Brown decision, it is useful to examine how a small but determined Midwestern black community achieved the same victory nearly ninety years earlier. This paper traces the history of African-Americans in Iowa's public schools, beginning with their establishment in 1834 and ending with three legal cases that finally gave African-American children equal access to public education during Reconstruction. Key in this struggle was the actions of Iowa's leading 19th-century citizen, Alexander Clark. It was Clark who brought suit in 1867 when his daughter Susan was turned away from the all-white school in Muscatine, and in Clark v. Board of Directors the following year, the state supreme court ruled that racially segregated schools, even if equal in resources, were inherently discriminatory. When local school districts resisted this ruling, other black parents brought their own suits and by 1875 had effectively ended racial segregation in Iowa, even as other northern states maintained their own separate but equal schools. This victory, I argue, was made possible by several factors. First, black Iowans had organized a black Civil War regiment only several years before the Clark decision and like other African-Americans around the country used their military service as political capital to push for racial progress in the postwar era. Despite the gender-specific language of this martial discourse, black men saw their activity as collective and inclusive of the entire community; thus a child like Susan Clark, who would have been doubly excluded from military service due to her age and gender, benefited from it. Second, black Iowans in the 1860s represented a critical mass large enough to effectively lobby for racial progress but small enough that white fears about becoming “overtaken” by African-Americans – whether in politics, labor, culture or education – were never realized.

Publication Type: Invited Paper
Abstract: The psychologist Kenneth Bancroft Clark (1914-2005) is known to historians as an activist-intellectual at the heart of the postwar liberal establishment. Remembered principally for his expert testimony cited by the Supreme Court in Brown v. Board of Education in 1954—that school segregation generated feelings of inferiority and personality damage in black children—Clark is described by Taylor Branch as the “reigning academic” of the civil rights movement. Clark was the first African-American to receive a doctorate in psychology from Columbia University in 1942; became a tenured professor at the City College of New York; gave testimony to courts, White House Conferences and government commissions; received federal grants for community projects; and befriended men and women of power. His election to the presidency of the American Psychological Association in 1971 underlines, for historians, Clark’s status as a pillar of the liberal establishment. This paper, however, will offer an alternative narrative of Clark’s activism and thought in the 1960s that uncovers his incremental radicalisation: his formulation of community psychiatry according to a highly politicised conception of mental health; the many points of overlap between his own blueprint for social change in Harlem and the demands of the black power movement; and, finally, the controversy which arose in 1971 concerning his presidency of the American Psychological Association.

Publication Type: Individual Paper
Abstract: This paper critically examines the thought of psychologist Kenneth Bancroft Clark, one of the 20th century’s most significant Black intellectuals. He is best known for his involvement in the 1954 Brown v. Board of Education decision where his research helped convince the U.S. Supreme Court that segregation caused psychological damage in Black children. For years, scholars have placed Clark within the post World War II “universalist” school of thought. According to this view, universalists worked to end racial and cultural differences because emphasizing race was seen as dangerous. By the 1960s, however, “pluralism” or “multiculturalism” began to have a wider appeal among racial and cultural minorities in the United States as it became clear that the promises of civil rights reform were problematic at best. Clark’s opposition to the Black Power movement and Black Studies generally is viewed as evidence of his rejection of pluralism or multiculturalism.

This interpretation of Clark is misleading and incomplete. Rather than embracing a “universalist” vision, Clark was attracted to a “cosmopolitan” ideal that found problems with both universalism and pluralism. This view was rooted in both his practical work with Black children and his deepening theoretical disagreement with integration supporters that the American Creed contradicted American racism; Clark believed that they reinforced each other. A critical analysis of his intellectual trajectory complicates the traditional interpretation of African American thought as integrationist or nationalist; it repositions him as a complex and insightful thinker who evolved in sophisticated ways over time.

Publication Type: Panelist Abstract
Abstract: The election of Barack Obama to the presidency of the United States is a seminal historical event. Yet, beyond the historicity and the symbolism, what does Obama's presidency mean to African people in the U.S. and the world. While there are Africans who take a "wait and see" and "give him a chance position," this paper posits that African-centric and Pan-Africanist critical analysis demand significantly more. Though speculative in nature, this paper suggests that the answers to the probabilities and possibilities of this historical moment extant. Does Obama's presidency speak to the best interest of African people? This paper seeks to answer that question and others through the writings and insights of Dr. John Henrik Clake.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: For over a decade, New York-based photographer Larry Clark has created unflinching portraits of sexuality, deviance, and crime amongst American youth. Beginning with his incendiary 1994 debut "Kids," the mention of his name alone stirred both ire and adoration among those in several fields, including film and cultural studies. Clark has consistently questioned and subverted the normative order surrounding portrayal of youths in film and other symbolic media (most notably photography). In particular, Clark claims that many depictions of "ordinary" youth, in both urban and suburban settings, are in fact myth; the haze of speculation surrounding youth deviance only further confounds an understanding of them. In using inexperienced or first-time actors, as well as actual incidents of youth violence, Clark portrays youth stripped of innocence without the benefit of clear motives or outcomes, suggesting a mercurial and intractable problem.