TIME CAPSULE

1895

On Dec. 7, Francis Cecil Sumner, the first African-American to earn a PhD in psychology (1920), was born. His many translations, book reviews and abstracts reflected broad interests, with an emphasis on social psychology.

1959

On Dec. 4, the first American behavioral experiment in space was carried out on the rhesus monkey SAM, who performed a shock-avoidance task during a 55-mile high suborbital flight launched at the NASA Flight Center at Wallops Island, Va. SAM was trained by W. Lynn Brown. Frederick H. Rohles Jr. directed the project for the U.S. Air Force. A second such flight was made on Jan. 21, 1960.

1972

On Dec. 5, APA granted its first accreditation for doctoral programs in clinical psychology to a professional school of psychology, the Fuller Theological Seminary Graduate School of Psychology in Pasadena, Calif.

1981

APA filed its first lawsuit on Dec. 2. The action was brought on behalf of three U.S. government workers receiving mental health care threatened by cuts in the federal budget. The plaintiffs contended that mental health services were cut more than other health-care services and that their well-being was jeopardized. The case was dismissed on April 30, 1982.

Source: APA Historical Database, created and maintained by Warren R. Street, Central Washington University, and published as "A Chronology of Noteworthy Events in American Psychology" (APA, 1994).



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