Psychologist Kenneth Clark's testimony marked the first time the NAACP Legal Defense Fund addressed the psychological implications of segregation to combat Jim Crow. Robert Carter's plan to use the expert testimony of social scientists in future direct action cases hung on the acceptance of Clark's testimony in the Briggs case. During the four months prior to this testimony, Clark worked with Carter and other NAACP Legal Defense Fund lawyers to develop strategies for social psychologists and other social scientists as expert witnesses in federal courts.¹ They faced huge ideological obstacles based on racism. After all, centuries of American social thought categorized African Americans as inferior to whites. Kenneth Clark and other NAACP witnesses, including the judges, remembered the "scientific" testing of the 1920s and 1930s that "proved" the inferiority of black intelligence. The conclusions drawn by these early psychologists were not the only hurdles attorneys for the plaintiffs had to dispel; they also faced the deeply entrenched belief systems of southern whites reared under the religious dogma of white supremacy.

Clark, a professor at New York City College, and Associate Director of the North Side School for Child Development, was chosen to testify in the Briggs case as an expert on the "effects of prejudice and discrimination on the personalities of children." He possessed respectable credentials as a research psychologist, and was noted for his work with Carnegie Corporation projects including Gunnar Myrdal's study, An American Dilemma.² Clark had also been the primary investigator on the effects of discrimination on American children for the Mid-Century White House Conference on Children and Youth held in 1950.³ One of his most effective research tools, the use of brown and of white infant dolls, was developed in conjunction with his wife and research partner, Mamie Phipps Clark.⁴

Prior to Briggs v. Elliott, the Clarks used dolls in a series of projective tests with elementary school children attending segregated public schools in New York and New England. By questioning African America and white children about the dolls, the Clarks formulated a method for determining "sensitivity" to racial discrimination in children.⁵ Before the Briggs trial, Dr. Clark questioned sixteen Clarendon County African-American elementary school children between the ages of six and nine. Clark used the dolls during his examination of these students, all of whom attended Scott's Branch Elementary, a school named in the case.

When asked to choose the brown doll, the white doll, or no doll at all, ten of the sixteen students selected the white doll as the "nice" doll. Eleven labeled the brown doll as the "bad" doll. Even though the children had demonstrated that they could distinguish between the white and brown dolls, when asked to choose which doll looked like them, seven selected the white doll. In another test, some children used pink or white crayons to color pictures of themselves in contrast to other African American children who chose darker colors to represent their skin color.⁶

The Scott's Branch children reacted similarly to other children the Clarks had studied, and like other African American children, several chose to portray themselves as white. According to Clark, this happened because "the pressures which these children sensed against being brown forced them to evade reality."⁷ Clark testified that his research illustrated the detrimental effects of prejudice, segregation, and discrimination on personality development. He argued, moreover, that even children of the segregating group--white children--experienced detrimental consequences such as guilt and moral confusion.⁸ His testimony, however, did not persuade the two judges it most needed to influence; both Chief Judge Parker and Judge Timmerman concurred in a majority opinion against the plaintiffs.⁹

¹ Kenneth Clark, Prejudice and Your Child (Boston: Beacon Press, 1955), 210. This book is an edited and revised version of the manuscript submitted as an Appellant's Brief in the Briggs case and then later considered by the U.S. Supreme Court in Brown v. Board of Education. See especially Appendices III and IV.

² Attorneys for the school desegregation cases and for previous school, housing, and voting cases of the 1940s cited Myrdal's An American Dilemma extensively as did those filing friend of court beliefs in the Brown cases. See David W. Southern, Gunnar Myrdal and Black-White Relations: The Use and Abuse of An American Dilemma 1944-1969 (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press), Chapter Six.

³ Clark, Prejudice and Your Child, 166-184; A partial copy of the Briggs transcripts were thoughtfully provided me by Russia Hughs, Assistant to Dr. Clark. The original court transcripts do not reside with the records kept by the National Archives--Southeast Region. Briggs v. Elliot, Transcripts (May 1951), 81-96.

⁴ Mamie K. Phipps Clark, "An Investigation of the Development of Consciousness of Distinctive Self in Pre-School Children," (Ph.D. diss., Howard University, 1939).

⁵ Clark, Prejudice and Your Child, 18-20.

⁶ Briggs v. Elliott, Transcript (May 1951), 88-89.

⁷ ibid.

⁸ Briggs v. Elliott, Transcripts, 88-89.

⁹ Chief Judge Parker and Judge Timmerman determined that the inequality suffered by the plaintiffs did not result from the law, but from the administration of the law. They therefore decreed that measures toward providing "equal" facilities would be promptly taken by the state. Briggs v. Elliott, Majority Opinion (June 21, 1951), 12.

Liza R. Rognas is a librarian and historian at The Evergreen State College Library in Olympia, Washington.

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