BLACK Americans and Latinos lead the way in the purchase of Smartphone technology and blacks are especially avid users of social media, according to a survey by the Pew Research Center, but black people are not given much credit – or publicity – for being key figures in the industry.
It’s an oversight that has gone largely uncorrected by media, even black media.
“When we get in the game we don’t just learn the game, but we are major players. But many of us are not household words,” said Mike Green, an award-winning writer, expert on black innovation and chief information officer of BlackInnovation.org.
For instance, John Thompson, a black man, replaced founder Bill Gates as chairman of the board of Microsoft and led the search for a CEO to replace Gates, who had held both titles.
Jesse E. Russell, who graduated from Tennessee State University with a degree in electrical engineering and earned an advanced degree at Stanford University, has been a thought-leader and inventor in wireless communications for more than 20 years and is known in tech circles as the Father of Cellular Communication.
Russell’s accomplishments were chronicled in an episode of The Greatest Stories Never Told.
Other major players include Majora Carter, a Peabody Award-winning broadcaster and founder of Sustainable South Bronx, Startup Box: South Bronx, a business incubator and tech education center in New York City, and Tony Gauda, CEO and co-founder of Bitcasa, an online storage business. Gauda previously engineered fraud protection systems at Mastercard.
Green said the media, generally, and black media in particular, have failed not only to make these entrepreneurs household names, but also to alert young students of color to the career possibilities in the innovation field.
Other communities, however, are not waiting on the news media to make a difference.
In October 2013, delegations from 17 HBCUs were invited to Silicon Valley to attend the inaugural HBCU Innovation Summit, a four-day event designed to form
collaborative relationships between black colleges and the premier hub of technological innovation.
The program, a result of a relationship between Stanford University and the United Negro College Fund (UNCF), provided the framework upon which a national template for economic inclusion would be built.
Morgan State University (MSU) was represented at that first meeting and was invited back this year, as part of a smaller group that went through a competitive selection process, to develop more ways to make them major players in digital and economic innovation.
“We are trying to create a culture of innovation,” said Morgan President David Wilson. “One of our main goals is to produce the next wave of innovators in America.”
Wilson said he wanted students at the university – which produces the third-highest number of engineers in the nation – to “start having conversations about starting their own businesses and think about themselves beyond being consumers.”
Seeking patents for inventions and processes that improve already existing products, developing relationships with investors and understanding the digital ecosystem were all part of this year’s meetings.
Those meetings were especially important because there are not many angel investors in the black community. Being introduced to movers and shakers in Silicon Valley is a major step in bringing the investor and black innovation communities together.
The Morgan team also included: Dr. Victor McCrary, vice president for research and economic development; Dr. Dereje Seifu, professor and interim chair of the physics department in the School of Computer, Mathematical and Natural Sciences; Dr. Umaru Bah, an associate professor in the Department of Strategic Communications in the School of Global Journalism & Communication, and engineering and physics major Jaime Arribas Starkey-El, who was named earlier this year as a University Innovation Fellow (UIF) in the National Center for Engineering Pathways to Innovation (Epicenter).
“Institutions like Tennessee State, Morgan, Tuskeegee, Hampton, these institutions have been hotbeds of innovation in the past and we must understand these legacies, not let go of them,” Wilson said, “and let our students know they are to build, not be left behind.”
The first step, though, is making sure they are aware of their role models.
Letter from the editor
5
Jackie Jones
chair, Department of Multimedia Journalism