Francis Sumner

Who was Francis Sumner?

Francis Cecil Sumner was a pivotal leader in education reform. He is primarily known for being the first African American to receive a Ph.D in psychology. Francis Sumner was the first African-American to receive an earned doctorate in any American university. He worked closely with Hall during his time at Clark, and his dissertation—published in Pedagogical Seminary, which later became the Journal of Genetic Psychology—focused on "Psychoanalysis of Freud and Adler."