Gloria Johnson-Powell


Gloria Johnson-Powell was a child psychiatrist who was also an important figure in the 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 and attended Boston Latin Academy. 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.
She was the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health associate dean for cultural diversity and a professor of psychiatry and pediatrics.

Civil Rights Movement

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

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.

Death

Johnson-Powell died on October 11, 2017 in Hamburg, Germany. She was 81.

Works