Herman George Canady, PhD, a foundational black psychologist, was born in 1901 in Okmulgee, Oklahoma and passed in 1970. He was a clinical and social psychologist and earned all his degrees from Northeastern University. He is most known for being the first psychologist to study how the race of the test proctor may create bias in IQ testing through his master’s thesis “The Effects of Rapport on the IQ: A Study in Racial Psychology”. This thesis provided suggestions for cultivating adequate test environments.
Throughout his career, he served many appointments, beginning with succeeding the position of Francis Sumner, the first black person to have a PhD degree in psychology, as chair of the psychology department at the West Virginia Collegiate Institute (now West Virginia State College). Another appointment included the Designated Diplomate of the American Board of Examiners in Professional Psychology. He played fundamental roles in the founding of the West Virginia Psychological Association, the West Virginia State Board of Psychological Examiners, and the Charleston (West Virginia) Guidance Clinic. Canady was also an avid member of the American Teachers Association, which was formed in response to the National Educations Association’s racist ban on black teachers. Additionally, he served as an expert witness for the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, in segregation and employment discrimination cases.
Some of Canady’s honors include the Kappa Alpha Psi Fraternity Middle-Eastern Provincial Achievement Award, and Northwestern University’s Alumni Merit Award. One of his notable publications, Psychology in Negro Institutions, is the only known published research work that assessed the status, training, and research efforts of early psychologists in black colleges and universities. Throughout his career, his efforts prepared universities of all kinds and the workforce to train and accept black psychologists. He thus paved the way for the black psychologists of today.