Albert Sidney Beckham
Intro
Albert Sidney Beckham (1897-1964) was the first African-American to hold the title “school psychologist,”1 and the third to receive a PhD in psychology.2 He was the first psychology professor at Howard University, where he taught every psychology course and established its first psychology lab.1,2,5 He also helped establish a psychological clinic at DuSable High School in Chicago, which was one of the first psychological clinics in a public school in the United States.1,2,5
Beckham’s work focused on intelligence and behavioral disorders. In particular, he sought to dispel the myth that IQ tests and the prevalence of certain behavioral disorders could “prove” the racial inferiority of African-Americans and other races.2,3,4 (Using pseudoscientific methods to justify racial discrimination, or “scientific racism”, was widespread.4) He stressed that many of the observed results did not reflect inherent racial differences, but differences in the environments and resources African-American children had available to them.2,3,4 In over 20 published academic articles, he studied how these inequalities affected children’s performance in school and on IQ tests.1,2,4,5 In his private practice, he tried to provide these same children with the resources they needed to succeed in school and beyond.5 All in all, Beckham was a leader in the fight against scientific racism and helped set the stage for future generations of African-American psychologists.4
It will be valuable to know if these [segregated] schools and similar schools might profit by a wise consideration of economic-social status in the organization of courses of study.3
About the Authors
Dan Pilat
Dan is a Co-Founder and Managing Director at The Decision Lab. He is a bestselling author of Intention - a book he wrote with Wiley on the mindful application of behavioral science in organizations. Dan has a background in organizational decision making, with a BComm in Decision & Information Systems from McGill University. He has worked on enterprise-level behavioral architecture at TD Securities and BMO Capital Markets, where he advised management on the implementation of systems processing billions of dollars per week. Driven by an appetite for the latest in technology, Dan created a course on business intelligence and lectured at McGill University, and has applied behavioral science to topics such as augmented and virtual reality.
Dr. Sekoul Krastev
Dr. Sekoul Krastev is a decision scientist and Co-Founder of The Decision Lab, one of the world's leading behavioral science consultancies. His team works with large organizations—Fortune 500 companies, governments, foundations and supernationals—to apply behavioral science and decision theory for social good. He holds a PhD in neuroscience from McGill University and is currently a visiting scholar at NYU. His work has been featured in academic journals as well as in The New York Times, Forbes, and Bloomberg. He is also the author of Intention (Wiley, 2024), a bestselling book on the science of human agency. Before founding The Decision Lab, he worked at the Boston Consulting Group and Google.
