MELISSA BLOCK, host:
From NPR News, this is ALL THINGS CONSIDERED. I'm Melissa Block.
ROBERT SIEGEL, host:
And I'm Robert Siegel.
As the Supreme Court heard arguments in Brown vs. Board of Education 50 years ago, one of the major questions was whether segregation in schools actually harmed black children. To try to prove that it did, the NAACP's lawyers used social science data, and that has since become one of the most controversial aspects of the landmark case. The work of many psychologists and researchers was presented to the court, but the doll experiments conducted by Kenneth Clark and his wife, Mamie, have become the symbol and the lightning rod for all that work. As part of our examination of the Brown decision and its legacy, NPR's Margot Adler reports.
MARGOT ADLER reporting:
Today, it has become conventional wisdom to argue that the social science used by the NAACP legal team in Brown was not science at all. In the decision, the Supreme Court said segregated schools deprived minority children of equal education opportunities and violated the 14th Amendment's guarantee of equal protection. The decision cited studies that segregation had adverse effects on the ability of black children to learn, even when the facilities were equal.
Was the research used in Brown important, irrelevant, problematic? Although many social scientists testified, the only mention of research in the decision is one controversial footnote, Footnote 11. Seven works are cited, starting with a collection of studies overseen by the psychologist Kenneth Clark. Clark, now age 90, would become a complex intellectual figure, the first black man to be a full professor at City College, a past president of the American Psychological Association, a member of the New York Board of Regents and the author of the classic "Dark Ghetto." Decades after Brown, he would come to have a very pessimistic and acerbic view of race relations. Here he is speaking in 1982.
SOUNDBITE OF 1982 RECORDING
Professor KENNETH CLARK (Psychologist): I look upon schools as having a function similar to that of hospitals. And I am no more receptive to people telling me, you know, that schools can't do anything because children come there with deficiencies than I can accept as being anything other than nonsense anyone who would say to you that hospitals can't do anything because people who go there are sick.
ADLER: The doll experiments conducted by Kenneth and Mamie Clark were a small part of the body of research put forward by the NAACP, but they are what critics of the research usually fix on. In these doll tests, white and black dolls were shown to young African-American children. Most black children in the North as well as the South chose white dolls over black when asked to choose the good dolls, the nicely colored dolls. The Clarks argued that racial consciousness and feelings of racial inferiority formed early. Eleanor Farra worked with Kenneth Clark for many years at the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies. She says the old pictures of the doll experiments are riveting.
Ms. ELEANOR FARRA (Former Colleague of Kenneth Clark): And you can see that he almost--Kenneth Clark, did is--almost had tears in his eyes just watching them, because it was so clear that they identified with the black dolls but really didn't think that they were any good. So that that's so graphic, you didn't even have to read anything that he has written to understand how profoundly important that particular experiment was and still is in our thinking about how black kids feel about themselves and, you know, what that in some ways does to white kids, as well.
ADLER: But critics of the doll test and the research cited in Brown argue that these psychologists and researchers were liberal reformers who masked their politics in the guise of social science. An argument once made only by segregationists has come to be accepted by many mainstream scholars. The critics point out that black children in the North, where there was no legal segregation, chose the white dolls more often than children in the South. How could one argue that legal segregation was the culprit? Clark and others replied that children are sensitive to all aspects of their society, to the images in newspapers and television, and many Northern schools were, in fact, segregated. Children didn't make distinctions between de facto and de jure segregation.
Judge Bob Carter, who argued the Brown case before the court, says some of the lawyers didn't want to use social science research. The dolls in particular caused some laughter, but they needed something to show that children were damaged.
Judge BOB CARTER: Some of the lawyers felt that this was nonsense. You know, this was not pure science. And I said to them, `OK. If you don't have an alternative, I'm going with this.' And they had no alternative, and that's how it came about.
ADLER: Ironically, perhaps tragically, 50 years after Brown, the doll tests are the only thing remembered by much of the public about Dr. Kenneth Clark. A towering intellect, he was reduced in the public's mind to being the `doll man,' and his wife, Mamie, who originated the experiments, was all but forgotten.
John Jackson teaches media studies at the University of Colorado and is the author of "Social Scientists for Social Justice: Making the Case Against Segregation." He says people fixated on the doll tests because they seemed like science. Most social psychology in the 1950s was about field work, interviewing people, whereas today the dominant trend is to be empirical, to make social science mirror the natural sciences. Jackson says many social sciences today are against...
Mr. JOHN JACKSON (University of Colorado): Social reformist-looking social science--Right?--which is definitely how Clark was trained. And there's still, I think, a split among psychologists between people who want this to look less value-laden, more experimental.
ADLER: But the doll experiments also resonated with the experience of many African-Americans, and they continue to do so. Here is Justice Thurgood Marshall talking about the Brown decision in a conversation recorded for Columbia University's Oral History Project. Marshall says he would go to poor black neighborhoods all over the South.
SOUNDBITE OF VINTAGE RECORDING
Justice THURGOOD MARSHALL: And I remember talking to this poor fellow in a poolroom, and he said, `If you got anything do with it, when I come back, I don't care whether it's a man, woman, a dog, a cat--let it be white.' That was the type of thing you'd hear throughout the South. When these tests were made, they to me proved what I knew all along, is that the average Negro had this complex that was built in as a result solely of segregation, and it was there. But Kenneth's proof was good enough for me; it was good enough for the court.
ADLER: But Marshall's notion that segregation caused psychological illness might be rejected by many African-Americans today. Many blacks have abandoned the integrationist ideal in favor of black identity, Afro-centrism. Marshall also believed that integration would succeed within five years, an optimism that now seems naive. The courts implemented school desegregation slowly, and many Southern states resisted for years. In the North, segregation persists, and there are communities were some argue it is more entrenched than ever.
Looking back at Brown today, Earl Pollock, who was a clerk to Chief Justice Earl Warren, says the footnote in Brown alluding to the research was irrelevant to the decision.
Mr. EARL POLLOCK (Former Supreme Court Clerk): The chief did not consider the footnote important at all.
ADLER: He is not alone in this view. Law Professor David Faigman is the author of "Legal Alchemy: The Use and Misuse of Science in the Law." Faigman asks a fascinating question: `Suppose the research by social scientists had demonstrated that segregated schools were superior. Would the justices have ruled differently?'
It's not a ridiculous question. All same-sex schools and all-black colleges make that argument today. Of course, there's a difference between choosing segregation and state sanctions. Faigman's answer: Around 10 years later, similar arguments were made, and the courts ruled that Brown was based not on research, but on constitutional principles. And when the Supreme Court extended desegregation to public beaches and golf courses, they didn't cite research to back that up.
Richard Kluger, in his book "Simple Justice," says instead of using social science, the Brown court could have simply shown that the true purpose of the 14th Amendment was to bring full equality and citizenship to all, ending all state-imposed discrimination. Faigman writes, `The court had reached a moral judgment about segregation before much of the nation had.' Margot Adler, NPR News, New York. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by an NPR contractor. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of NPR’s programming is the audio record.
