Thursday, March 9 at 5:30pm:

Tim Spofford will be our special guest at the bookstore in connection with his new book, which details a dramatic episode in Black history told in vivid detail for the first time. What the Children Told Us is the biography of Drs. Kenneth and Mamie Phipps Clark, Harlem psychologists and racial justice pioneers, who
developed a controversial doll test. Using brown and white dolls, their experiment played a key role in the landmark Supreme Court ruling against segregated school systems in 1954. Today, Clark dolls are on exhibit at the National Museum of African-American History and Culture in Washington, and at the Brown v. the
Board of Education National Historic Site in Topeka, Kansas. What the Children Told Us has garnered many fine reviews. Booklist has this to say about it: “Part biography, part history, and part psychological study, this emotionally charged book chronicles the lives of Kenneth and Mamie Clark as they challenged
segregation by studying its effects on Black identity and self-esteem as early as childhood.” Spofford has a doctorate in English and worked for years in classrooms and newsrooms. He’s written for the New York Times, Newsday, Mother Jones magazine, Columbia Journalism Review and other publications.