An Interview with Dr. Ife Landsmark '75
The oral history interview of Ife Landsmark, Class of 1975, was conducted on Friday, October 28, 2022. The oral history interview covers Landsmark’s childhood in Bedford-Stuyvesant, NY, her experiences at Dartmouth College, and her career as a clinical psychologist. Landsmark grew up on welfare in a single-parent, low-income household. Landsmark and her three siblings were latchkey kids, “school-aged [children] of working parents who must spend part of the day unsupervised” (Merriam Webster). Landsmark attended St. Peter Claver Catholic Elementary School and Bishop McDonnell High School. In addition to Catholicism, Landsmark’s mother, Rosanna Isabella O'Garro Landsmark Dickerson, exposed Landsmark and her siblings to Judaism, Methodism, Greek Orthodox Christianity, and Islam. At age sixteen, Landsmark left home and “was on [her] own" (Landsmark 2022).
After graduating from Bishop McDonnell Memorial High School in 1969, Landsmark attended York College and Dartmouth College. At Dartmouth, Landsmark was a tutor for the ABC (A Better Chance) program, a disc jockey for the Dartmouth College Radio (WDCR), and the Managing Editor of the Black Praxis newspaper. Additionally, Landsmark majored in psychology, minored in biology, and was Dartmouth’s first female Senior Fellow. As a Senior Fellow, Landsmark studied the “separation of people” and “the psychological implications of reverse preferences” (The Dartmouth 1974).
After Dartmouth, Landsmark earned a Ph.D. in clinical psychology from Columbia University. As a clinical psychologist, she has worked at inpatient psychiatric hospitals, nursing homes, community clinics, and residential treatment facilities.
Interview Video
