Ruth Winifred Howard
One of the
first African American women to earn a Ph.D. in psychology born in Washington,
DC on March 4, 1900, her name was Ruth Winifred Howard she
was the youngest of the Protestant minister William James Howard and Alverda
Brown Howard's eight children. She focused on helping disadvantaged people
and this interest united to her experiences with her father's congregation made
her enroll in the social work division of Simmons College, Boston in 1920.
Her first
social work job was in 1921 in Cleveland, Ohio with the Cleveland Urban League as a counselor
and community program coordinator.
Howard then took a position with the city's Child Welfare Agency and
focused on children living in marginal family situations and in foster homes. She realized there were lack of concern for
the cultural and social milieu of the community they were serving and she thought
this fact was a barrier to understanding the feelings, attitudes, and behaviors
of these children. Realizing the importance of developing this kind of
understanding, she decided to study psychology.
Howard won
a Laura Spelman Rockefeller Fellowship and, in 1929, enrolled at Columbia
University and during her year there she took classes at School of Education
and at the New York School of Social Work, with courses in psychology, child
development, and a parent education practicum.
In 1930 Howard transferred to the University of Minnesota's Institute of
Child Development where she completed her doctorate
in psychology in 1934. Her supervisor and mentor
was Dr. Florence Goodenough who, at the time, was working on the Draw-a-Man
test.
For her doctoral
research, Howard studied the developmental history of 229 sets of triplets,
ranging in age from early infancy up to 79 years. This work eventually
published in both the Journal of Psychology (1946) and the Journal
of Genetic Psychology (1947).
Following
her graduation from the University of Minnesota, she married fellow
psychologist Dr. Albert Sidney Beckham and moved to Chicago where he was
employed. Howard accepted an internship
at the Illinois Institute of Juvenile Research it prepared her for a career
dedicated to children and young people and included evaluation and therapy, as
well as experience at a state school for delinquent girls.
A perceived
need to refresh her skills led Howard to pursue postdoctoral studies at the
University of Chicago where she studied projective techniques, reading therapy,
play therapy, and client-centered therapy with Carl Rogers and Virginia Axline.
Howard remained in Chicago
and continued her private practice work in addition to working as a
psychologist at the McKinley Center for Retarded Children (1964-1966), during
this time her husband died (1964)
At the end of her 1983
autobiographical essay Howard paid tribute to the women psychologists who have
contributed to the growth and development of psychology and noted that
so-called minority groups have also shared in this progressShe closed by
stating, “I salute women psychologists as they receive recognition within their
field and when they help other women attain their potential”. Ruth Howard died
on February 12, 1997 in Washington, DC.
Bibliography:
http://www.apadivisions.org/division-35/about/heritage/ruth-howard-biography.aspx
http://www.feministvoices.com/ruth-howard/
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