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influential intellectuals

“A Series of Glorious Defeats”: Kenneth Clark & the White Liberal Audience

This is a slightly longer version of the paper I gave last weekend at the S-USIH conference. Much thanks to my co-panelists, Fatma Dogus Ozdemir & Charles Richter, who both presented compelling papers, and Thomas Sugrue for chairing the panel and offering such thoughtful & thorough commentary.  In 1965, as white America groped for explanations and scapegoats in the wake of the Watts Riots, Kenneth Clark, the black sociologist whose research had played a central role in the unanimous decision in Brown v. Board, stuck up for his friend Daniel Patrick Moynihan. Moynihan, then the Assistant Secretary of Labor for Read more