BLACK SOCIAL HISTORY Gloria Johnson-Powell

Gloria Johnson-Powell, MD (born Gloria Johnson, c. 1937) is a child psychiatrist who is also an important figure in the American Civil Rights Movement and was one of the first African-American women to attain tenure at Harvard Medical School.

Background and career

She grew up in Boston, Massachusetts. She received her B.A. in economics and sociology from Mount Holyoke College in 1958 and her M.D. in 1962 from Meharry Medical College in Nashville, Tennessee. She completed her residency at UCLA and was on the faculty there for fifteen years before joining the Harvard Medical School (where she was on the faculty for ten years).

She is currently the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health associate dean for cultural diversity and a professor of psychiatry and pediatrics.^[1]

Civil Rights Movement

In his 1999 book, The Children,^[2] David Halberstam includes her as one of the key figures in the Civil Rights Movement.^[3]

Scholarship

Her text, Black Monday's Children, discusses the effect of desegregation on southern black children and she has continued working with minority children. Johnson-Powell has also published a book about the impact of sexual abuse on children. In addition, with her daughter, she wrote the biography of her mother.

Works

Black Monday's Children: A Study Of The Effects Of School Desegregation On The Self-Concepts Of Southern Children
The Psychosocial Development of Minority Children editor Brunner/Mazel New York 1983 ISBN 0-87630-277-0
Lasting Effects of Child Sexual Abuse co-editor with Gail Elizabeth Wyatt, Sage Publications 1998 Newbury Park ISBN 0-8039-3256-1
The House On Elbert Street: The Biography Of A Welfare Mother
Transcultural Child Development: Psychological Assessment and Treatment co-editor with Joe Yamamoto Wiley New York 1997 ISBN 0-471-17479-3