Charles Henry Thompson

Charles Henry Thompson (1896 Jackson, Mississippi- 1980) was the first African American to obtain a doctoral degree in educational psychology. Founder of the Journal of Negro Education, he has been characterized as "arguably the most prominent dean in African American higher education during the era of segregation".

Thompson was born in 1896 in Jackson, Mississippi to Patrick Henry and Sara Estelle Thompson. His parents were both teachers at the Jackson College. Thompson went to school in Virginia at Wayland Academy where he graduated from high school in 1914.

Straight after high school Thompson enrolled in Virginia Union University. He graduated in 1917 with a Bachelor’s Degree by doubling his course load. After graduation, he trained as an army cadet in Des Moines, Iowa. He then attended the University of Chicago and fulfilled a second undergraduate degree in 1918. Thompson was drafted into the army in Camp Grant and then France. He remained in the Army for nineteen months, where he was an Infantry Personnel Regimental Sergeant Major. When he got discharged, he returned to the University of Chicago, double majoring in education and psychology. He received a Masters degree in 1920 and a Ph.D. in 1925.

Thompson had a strong desire to become a psychiatrist, but settled for educational psychology because there were not any known African Americans with a degree in psychiatry. He became an instructor at Virginia Union University between 1920 and 1921. In 1922 he became the director of instruction at Alabama State Normal School, a historically black college, serving until 1924. He was a social science and psychology professor from 1925 through 1926 at Sumner High School and Junior College located in Kansas City. Thompson finally settled at Howard University, where he held various posts, including professor of education, Dean of the College of Liberal Arts, and the Dean of the Graduate School.

In 1932 Thompson founded the Journal of Negro Education, and he was its editor-in-chief for over thirty years. In his career, he saw the end of legally sanctioned segregation of public schools, following the United States Supreme Court's ruling in Brown v. Board of Education (1954).

Thompson was a member of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.