Among those being honored on May 23rd is special guest Kate Clark Harris, the daughter of Dr. Kenneth Clark and Dr. Mamie Clark, the first African American man and the first African American woman, respectively, to earn a Ph.D. in psychology from Columbia University in the early 1940s. Over the course of 14 years, they developed and conducted what became known as the "Doll Tests"—groundbreaking experiments that revealed the psychological effects of segregation on African American children. The tests were conducted using several dolls, all identical except for skin color. The Black children, ages 3–7, were asked to identify which doll they preferred. The majority preferred the white doll, leading Drs. Clark to conclude that “prejudice, discrimination and segregation” damaged their self-esteem and caused Black children to develop a sense of inferiority. In 1947, Gordon Parks photographed the Clarks conducting their “Doll Tests” for Ebony magazine for an article titled “Problem Kids: New Harlem clinic rescues ghetto youth from emotional short circuit.” The "Doll Test" research was later used as key evidence in school desegregation lawsuits including, notably, Brown v. Board of Education (1954).

As a child, Kate was surrounded by her parents' colleagues, and personally witnessed research and trials related to the "Doll Test." She and her brother Hilton grew up in an environment filled with scholarly debate, activism and creativity. In a 2023 interview with Ebony magazine, Clark Harris recalled witnessing the development of that groundbreaking research in her home: "It was my mother's idea to start the test to start to examine the children's development of ego and how they think about themselves at a very early age. My father was concerned about what these young children, some preschool-age, thought of themselves. It started out with stick figures. Then it was coloring books and then came the dolls. My father came home one day with so many dolls, Black and white ones, and I really thought that they were mine. They did give me dolls. Not the same, but other Black dolls."

In that same interview, Clark Harris also recalled meeting Parks in the 1940s when he photographed her parents for the magazine: "I remember him as a man and a friend of my parents. He was extraordinarily talented and was very involved in taking pictures of us and our family, but back then, I didn't think of it as anything special. He would come and set up certain pictures, and it was fun. The one I remember was with my mother, father, brother, and me. I think I was on the floor."