Children, Race, and Power: Kenneth and Mamie Clark's Northside Center [Hardcover]

Gerald Markowitz (Author), David Rosner (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0813916879 | ISBN-13: 978-0813916873 | Publication Date: September 1, 1996 | Edition: 1St Edition

Traces the influence of social scientists Kenneth and Mamie Clark on the civil rights movement, on child welfare, and on public policy in New York in the fifties and sixties, when they established Harlem's Northside Center. UP.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Kenneth Clark was a middle-class academic social scientist who rose to prominence when his research on urban black poverty was cited by the Supreme Court justices in Brown v. Board of Education, the landmark legal decision that desegregated American public schools. In his Harlem clinic, which was managed by his wife Mamie, Clark pioneered a psychotherapeutic approach to the problems besetting society's neglected underclass. Later, in the 1960s, fired by the radicalism of the time, Clark became much more political and critical of the societal failures that had created those problems. Markowitz and Rosner, historians at the City University of New York, trace the story of this champion of poor blacks.

From Publishers Weekly

In 1946, Northside Testing and Consultation Center was founded to provide mental health care to minority children in upper Manhattan. Under the Clarks, best known for their tests in which black children routinely chose white dolls over black ones (tests cited in Earl Warren's Brown v. Board of Education decision), Northside battled a social service system "whose primary function... had come to be to rationalize its failure to help Harlem's children." By the mid-1960s, the Northside mission had changed to include providing its clients and their families with "an individualized anti-poverty program," which increasingly translated into advocacy and aid in negotiating the education and social welfare bureaucracy. While this is an institutional history, complete with details of power struggles and policy disputes, it is more significantly a history of racism, with the Center as a window on racial inequality in the mental health profession, education, housing and social welfare systems. The authors make good use of oral histories, papers and interviews from the Clarks and the Center's staff and board members, thereby animating the book with a sense of personal commitment. This important, informative tribute on the Center's 50th anniversary powerfully reminds us that opportunities for America's inner-city youth have changed little. Photos.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 304 pages
• Publisher: University of Virginia Press; 1St Edition edition (September 1, 1996)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0813916879
• ISBN-13: 978-0813916873
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 6.4 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.5 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,719,746 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Discover books, learn about writers, read author blogs, and more.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars This is a completely new look at race relations in America, April 5, 1997

By A Customer

This review is from: Children, Race, and Power: Kenneth and Mamie Clark's Northside Center (Hardcover)

This book is a sleeper that will ultimately find its place among the best books on race, children, and Black-Jewish relationships in post War America. Unlike so many books that relie on the invented memory of a few primary actors, this scholarly account closely follows the crisis among Blacks and Jews through the experiences of children. Besides being an excellent political biography of Mamie and Kenneth Clark, the book is a troubling journey into the lives of the children of the great black migration. Despite its seemingly narrow focus, this is a rich narrative account of recent American history.