By: Anna Grace Cole
April 3, 2023
In 1954, the Supreme Court overturned Plessy v. Ferguson, establishing that segregated schools were unconstitutional with the landmark case Brown v. Board of Education.[1] The ruling was due in part to the work of Doctors Mamie and Kenneth Clark.
Doctor Kenneth Clark was the first African American to graduate from Columbia University with a Ph.D. in psychology. Doctor Mamie Phipps Clark was the second African American and first African American woman to graduate from Columbia University with a Ph.D. in psychology. The Clarks married and worked alongside each other throughout their career, focusing their psychological studies on exploring racial biases in education.[2] As part of this research, the Clarks conducted the Dolls Test. In the Dolls Test, Black children were presented with two white dolls and two black dolls. Other than their skin tone, the dolls looked identical. Dr. Kenneth Clark asked the children several questions about the dolls, and overall, the test showed that the Black children preferred the white doll and rejected the doll that shared their same skin color.[3]
Brown v. Board of Education was the combination of four cases from Kansas, Delaware, Virginia, and South Carolina,[4] and Dr. Kenneth Clark shared the results of the Dolls Test as expert testimony in several of the cases.[5] In the Brown decision, Justice Warren wrote, “Whatever may have been the extent of psychological knowledge at the time of Plessy v. Ferguson, this finding is amply supported by modern authority.”[6] This “modern authority” was the Clark Doll Test. Segregated schools had a significant impact on the self-acceptance of Black children. The Court finally addressed the fact that separate is not equal, and “to separate [children] from others of similar age and qualifications solely because of their race generates a feeling of inferiority as to their status in the community that may affect their hearts and minds in a way unlikely to ever be undone.”[7] Black children across the United States had been told time and time again that they were less than others and that whiteness—even in the toys they played with—should be their preference. It was clear to the young, impressionable Black children that law and society barred them from sitting in the same classroom as a child with no differences other than skin color. Although their education was supposed to be equal, it is unsurprising that the children were left with a feeling of inferiority and the understanding that white skin is inherently better.[8] Such a belief is profoundly damaging and undoubtedly has a lasting impact. As such, in Brown, segregated public schools were held to be unconstitutional.[9]
A year later, in Brown II,[10] public schools were instructed to integrate “with all deliberate speed.”[11] Merriam-Webster Dictionary defines deliberate as “slow, unhurried, and steady as though allowing for decision on each individual action involved.”[12] Schools were not integrated immediately; rather, it would take years. In many respects, the problem persists today, even if it is not in the form of explicit segregation practices.[13] Largely, however, children of all racial and ethnic identities are educated side-by-side in a classroom.
Last semester, as part of a final project for UT Law’s Race & The Supreme Court course, I conducted a Doll Test of my own—I wanted to see if self-identification had improved in young children since the original Clark Doll Test. With the help of Professor Brooklyn Sawyers-Belk and the University of Tennessee Early Learning Center, I pulled together a collection of dolls. Two dolls were very similar to the original test in that one was white, and one was Black, but otherwise, they were identical. I also wanted to take advantage of the dolls we have access to today—many feature different body sizes, a wide range of skin tones, hair color, hair texture, and visible disabilities. In an effort to widen the scope of the test, I included a pair of dolls in a wheelchair (one white, one Black), an able-bodied pair of dolls (again, one white and one Black), and a pairing of a Black Panther doll and a Captain America doll (there is an extremely limited number of action figures that represent Black characters, while white superhero dolls are abundant). For each test, the child was asked a set of questions about each pair of dolls:
Which doll is your favorite?
Which doll is not your favorite?
Which doll do you want to play with?
Which doll do you not want to play with?
Why do you want to play with [the doll the child selected] the most?
Which doll looks like you?
We ran the test with about a dozen children, so the test was more qualitative than quantitative. There were a few issues with the children’s ages and, understandably, a little hesitation with the situation. Across the board, however, the children indicated their preference for the doll whose skin color was the most similar to the color of their skin. This finding is a complete reversal from the conclusion of the Clark Doll Test—all of the children could identify the doll that looked like them, and they liked that doll. It is impossible to say that the result of our small test is solely due to the integration of schools. Still, there is no doubt that these children, who are in a preschool classroom with children of many different identities, are benefiting greatly from learning that differences are a good thing and ought to be celebrated.
[1] Brown v. Bd. of Educ., 347 U.S. 483, 495 (1954) (“We conclude that in the field of public education the doctrine of ‘separate but equal’ has no place. Separate educational facilities are inherently unequal.”).
[2] Mamie Phipps Clark, PhD, and Kenneth Clark, PhD, Am. Psychological Ass’n, https://www.apa.org/pi/oema/resources/ethnicity-health/psychologists/clark (last visited Apr. 2, 2023).
[3] See Erin Blakemore, How Dolls Helped Win Brown v. Board of Education, History, https://www.history.com/news/brown-v-board-of-education-doll-experiment (last updated Jan. 11, 2022); see also Brown v. Board and “The Doll Test,” Legal Defense Fund, https://www.naacpldf.org/brown-vs-board/significance-doll-test/ (last visited Apr. 2, 2023).
[4] Brown, 347 U.S.at 486.
[5] See Brown v. Board and “The Doll Test,” supra note 2.
[6] Brown, 347 U.S. at 494.
[7] Id.
[8] See generally School Segregation and Integration, Library of Congress, https://www.loc.gov/collections/civil-rights-history-project/articles-and-essays/school-segregation-and-integration/ (last visited Apr. 2, 2023).
[9] Brown, 347 U.S. at 495 (holding “that the plaintiffs and others similarly situated for whom the actions have been brought are, by reason of the segregation complained of, deprived of the equal protection of the laws guaranteed by the Fourteenth Amendment).
[10] Brown v. Bd. of Educ., 349 U.S. 294 (1955).
[11] Id. at 301.
[12] Deliberate, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/deliberate (last visited Apr. 2, 2023).
[13] See Halley Potter & Michelle Burris, Here Is What School Integration in America Looks Like Today, The Century Found. (Dec. 2, 2020), https://tcf.org/content/report/school-integration-america-looks-like-today/.
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