A. Wade Boykin, PhD, is awarded a presidential citation for his longstanding commitment to the psychology of Black people in the United States and his contributions to the psychological research literature that has contributed to the understanding of Black children and youth in the sociohistorical context of the United States.
Dr. Boykin was a professor and director of the graduate program in the department of psychology at Howard University, where he also served as executive director of the Center for Research on the Education of Students Placed At Risk (CRESPAR), now titled the Capstone Institute. A cognitive psychologist by training, Dr. Boykin brought his training in empirical research and his understanding of the role of culture in human functioning to the study of the education of Black youth.
In his triple quandary framework, Dr. Boykin articulated three psychosocial contexts that Black people in the United States must negotiate—mainstream values, the values of their own Black communities, and the experience of being minoritized—contexts that continue to be important in studying Black and other minoritized youth. In addition to providing a cogent theory articulating the lived experiences of African Americans, this framework also acknowledged the importance of bringing culture into the psychological study of Blacks in the United States.
Dr. Boykin’s career also highlighted the importance of supporting theory with robust empirical investigations, based on the assumption that strong empirical evidence would lead to greater understanding of the psychology of African Americans. This perspective and the numerous articles that he published place him in the vanguard of Black psychologists in the nation. He served on APA President, Melba Vasquez’ Presidential Task Force, which authored the report entitled “Ethnic and Racial Disparities in Education: Psychology’s Contributions to Understanding and Reducing Disparities,” and was also a member of the U.S. President’s National Mathematics Advisory Panel, among many other service contributions. Dr. Boykin is an elected member of the National Academy of Education.
For a lifetime of contributions to education and psychology, it is my honor to present Dr. A. Wade Boykin with this Presidential Citation.