Dr. Frances Cress Welsing used her platform as a psychiatrist in the nation’s capital to battle white supremacy.

Dubbed the “Queen of Black Consciousness,” she won attention for her views on white racism, including her assertions that white racism is because of a deficiency of melanin, the pigment that darkens skin, and that white people oppressed black people out of fear of black domination.

In her 1970 paper, “The Cress Theory of Color-Confrontation and Racism,” she wrote that melanin deficiency fueled “an uncontrollable sense of hostility and aggression” among white people toward people of color.

Dr. Welsing is probably best known for her 1991 book, “The Isis Papers: The Keys to the Colors,” that was based on 20 years of research and is now considered required reading on the psychological origins and manifestations of white supremacy.

Dr. Welsing died Saturday, Jan. 2, 2016, in Washington. Her family said she succumbed to complications from a stroke. She was 80.

Born in Chicago in 1935, Dr. Welsing was the daughter of physician Henry Cress and schoolteacher Ida Mae Griffen. After earning her bachelor’s degree at Antioch College and her medical degree from Howard University, Dr. Welsing did a residency as a psychiatrist in Washington and then joined the Howard faculty as an assistant professor.

In the wake of the controversy over her 1970 paper, she was dismissed from Howard. She then spent more than 20 years as a child psychiatrist with the District of Columbia Department of Human Services.

She was fearless in expressing herself and willingly took on the likes of Dr. William Shockley, who theorized that black people are genetically inferior.

During a 1974 debate with Dr. Shockley on “Tony Brown’s Journal” on PBS, she debunked his notions and even compared his theories to those of Nazi Germany during World War II.

Dr. Welsing gained renewed attention with the publication of “The Isis Papers,” in which she expanded on her themes that white supremacist attitudes stemmed from a fear of genetic annihilation and that white people are the result of a genetic mutation that turned them into the outcast offspring of the original peoples of Africa.

“In the white supremacy mind-set,” she wrote, “consciously or subconsciously, black males must be destroyed in significant numbers, just as they were in earlier days when there was widespread lynching and castration of black males.”

Musician Chuck D credits Dr. Welsing with being the intellectual inspiration for the 1990 Public Enemy album “Fear of a Black Planet.”

Her assertions about white genetic inferiority were met with criticism from some biologists who derided her claims as pseudoscientific. She also was criticized for suggesting that white men imposed homosexuality on black males to reduce the overall black population.

However, her overall study of racism focused on strengthening and nurturing black children and ensuring stable home foundations as a way to ultimately challenge the white supremacist structure. 

“We must revolutionize ourselves,” she said in a 1987 interview published in Essence magazine. “Whether white people are consciously or subconsciously aware of it, they are behaving in a manner to ensure white genetic survival. We must know this truth. And the truth is the first step toward real strength.”