Today In Black History
Dr. Ruth Howard Beckman, an African American Psychologist who studied multiple births and developmentally challenged children.
Issue #565 Today In Black History, Friday, April 12, 2024
Today’s Black History WOW!
Ruth Winifred Howard Beckham was an American psychologist, best known for her work concerning students with special needs at Children's Provident Hospital School. She is one of the first African American women to earn a Ph.D. in Psychology. She was born on March 25, 1900, the daughter of a schoolteacher and a pastor, who both instilled in her a deep-rooted passion for education and community service.
After graduating from high school, Howard attended Simmons College in Boston, Massachusetts where she majored in social work. In 1921, she received her bachelor's degree and moved to Cleveland, Ohio where she started as a social worker. Shortly after, she went back to Simmons College and received her master's degree in 1927.
Howard received the Laura Spelman Rockefeller fellowship in 1929 and again in 1930. With this fellowship, she attended the Teacher's College and School of Social Work at Columbia University from 1929 to 1930 and studied child psychology at the Child Development Institute at the University of Minnesota from 1930 to 1934.
In 1934, she received her Ph.D. in psychology and child development from the University of Minnesota.
Dr. Beckham studied the development of triplets for her doctoral dissertation. One of her main conclusions was that triplets were less developed in general abilities than single children. Her doctoral research, “A Study of the Development of Triplets,” was the first in-print study of a sizable group of triplets of varying sizes from numerous ethnic groups.
After receiving her doctorate, she was awarded an internship at the Illinois Institute for Juvenile Research and eventually began her own clinical psychology-based private practice.
In 1934, she married Albert Sidney Beckham and moved to Chicago, Illinois, where she remained until 1987. Albert Beckham died in 1964. Dr. Beckham continued her work in Chicago as a consultant for children's programs at the Abraham Lincoln Center and Worthington and Hurst Psychological Consultants, a psychologist for the McKinley Center for Retarded Children, on the Chicago Health Board, Mental Health Division, and her private practice for another four years.
From 1940 to 1964, Dr. Beckham co-directed the Center for Psychological Services with her husband Albert Sidney Beckham. During this time, she also held the staff psychologist position at the Provident Hospital School of Nursing in Chicago, which trained African American nurses. Additionally, she held the position of a psychological consultant at Florida and Missouri schools of nursing while lecturing, working at psychology clinics, and consulting for other organizations.
Dr. Beckham believed in the power of education to transform lives and was a fierce advocate for inclusive education. She promoted the idea that all children, regardless of their abilities or disabilities, deserved access to a quality education that would help them reach their full potential.
She civically was a board member of the YWCA of Chicago, the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom, the American Association of College Women, the National Association of Art Institute of Chicago, and Delta Sigma Theta Sorority, Inc.
Dr. Ruth Winifred Howard Beckham died in Washington, D.C, on February 12, 1997.
Today In Black History
- In 1787, Absalom Jones, Richard Allen, and six others created the Philadelphia Free African Society.
- In 1861, Confederate soldiers attacked Fort Sumpter in the Charleston, South Carolina harbor, beginning the Civil War.
- In 1869, the North Carolina legislature passed an anti-Ku Klux Klan Law.
- In 1945, President Franklin D. Roosevelt died in office and Vice President Harry Truman was sworn in as the 33rd President.
- In 1955, Dr. Jonas Salk released the polio vaccine which was given full approval by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.
- In 1980, Samuel Doe took control of Liberia in a coup d’etat, killing President William Talbert and 27 others, and ending 130 years of national democratic presidential succession.
- In 1983, Harold Washington was elected as the first Black mayor of Chicago.
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