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Early Life Francis had one sibling named Eugene (Bayton, 1975).

Education At the time, most secondary schools would not accept females and minorities (Bayton, 1975).

Sumner’s applications would read “private instruction in secondary subjects by father (Bayton, 1975).”

Sumner graduated from Lincoln College magnum cum laude in English, Greek, Latin, and philosophy in 1915 (Sawyer, 2000).

Sumner then heard that Clark University had accepted him and awarded him with a senior scholarship in psychology (Bayton, 1975).

Career While at Wilberforce University, Sumner was a professor of psychology and philosophy (Sawyer, 2000).

While at West Virginia Collegiate Institute Sumner wrote several controversial articles. These articles were criticisms about various colleges and universities’ treatments towards African Americans. Sumner used these articles to support and raise awareness for the views brought up by Booker T. Washington and W.E.B. Dubois. (Earlham)

In an attempt to show support and praise for the excellence of his students, Sumner created an incentive program. This award was given to one of his psychology students who submitted the most superlative essay on a specific theme. One recipient of this award was Kenneth Bancroft Clark. Kenneth Clark was the first African American president of the APA. He went on to study race psychology and used his research on prejudice, discrimination, and segregation in the developing child in the famous Supreme Court case Brown v. Board of Education (Sawyer, 2000).

Sumner had at least 45 publication throughout his career. His interest in applied psychology led to multiple publications on color and vision. Sumner’s primary focus was in the psychology of religion. He gave a paper to the International Congress of Religious Psychology (Vienna). The paper was on “The Mental Hygiene of Religion.” (Bayton, 1975)

Another of Sumner’s notable achievements was his work with the Journal of Social Psychology and the Psychological Bulletin. For years he was the official abstractor for both journals. He began writing the abstracts in 1946, between the years 1948 and 1949 he wrote 505 abstracts. Sumner wrote over 2,000 abstracts during his time with these two journals. Most of the abstracts he wrote were from French and German authors, others were Russian, Spanish, and English. It was Sumner’s fluency in these languages that enabled him to make this contribution (Bayton, 1975).

Sumner was always described as motivating and encouraging (Bayton, 1975). Kenneth Clark once stated, “And he didn’t just teach psychology. He taught integrity. And, although he led the way for other Blacks in psychology, Sumner would permit no nonsense about there being anything like “Black psychology” -any more than he would have allowed any nonsense about “Black astronomy.” In this and many other ways, Sumner was a model for me. In fact, he has always been my standard when I evaluate myself.” (Hentoff, 1982, p. 45)