figures prominently in any discussion of race and identity in the 20th century, and his early career challenges us to understand the place of social identity research in the development of American social psychology. Phillips (2000) argued for understanding Kenneth Clark as "a model Afrocentric psychologist-activist" (p. 164), and while the scope of my analysis is more limited temporally, it is consistent with Phillips's attempts to draw connections among race, identity, and investigative practice.In the course of Kenneth Clark's career, he was an action researcher in Harlem, a professor at City College of New York, an advocate for integrated education throughout America's school system, and a public intellectual much in demand beyond the local and national levels (Keppel, 1995). In these ever enlarging circles of influence, it is perhaps somewhat artificial to narrow a life as large and nationally prominent as that of Kenneth Clark to his practice of social psychology. However, much is to be regained in our understanding of the diverse origins of social psychology by locating Clark's career in the context of the tremendous growth in psychological social psychology during and after World War II (Capshew, 1995).Clark was part of a new generation of social psychologists who had participated in research during World War II and who were ready to turn their My research draws on the papers of Kenneth B. Clark at the Library of Congress, City College of New York, the New York Public Library's Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, as well as a set of seven interviews with Kenneth Clark, housed at the Columbia University Oral History Collection. I thank Stephen Berger and John Jackson Jr. for their insightful comments on an earlier version of this chapter. On several occasions, I visited the places in New York City familiar to Kenneth and Mamie Clark, to get a sense of where they grounded their working lives. I am particularly indebted to Donna Lewis, owner of Home Sweet Harlem, on W. 135th Street, who graciously allowed me to linger over great food and conversation while en route. Some of my sense of Kenneth Clark's social psychology is grounded in the social geography of Central Harlem, City College of New York, and Northsidc Center's various locations. I am also grateful to Minniejean Brown Trickey (see www.journeytolittlerock.com), one of the group of students (the Little Rock Nine) who integrated ail-White Central High School, for her reminiscences of living with the Clark family in the late 1950s (see www.journeytolittlerock.com).