As co-founder of National Black Business Month and author of the annual State of Black Business series, John William Templeton continues to make history as a business journalist and historian.

In Walls Come Tumbling Down: State of Black Business, sixth edition, he has honed the series into a powerful tool for the enhancement of the 1.2 million African-American businesses, complete with state-by-state benchmarking of the key eight policies which affect the prospects of black entrepreneurs.

In his home town of San Francisco, he’s seen first hand what occurs when public policy turns hostile to black economic development.  The Christian Science Monitor recently described the outmigration of blacks who no longer see visible black firms creating a foundation for their neighborhoods.

Earlier in his career, as editor of the Richmond Afro-American and Richmond Planet, the first black newspaper to celebrate a centennial edition, Templeton saw to it that the Jackson Ward business district became a National Historic District as president of the Jackson Ward Project Area Committee.

After becoming the first black editor of a business newspaper at the San Jose Business Journal, he developed an expertise in equal opportunity in high technology.  As co-convenor of the Coalition for Fair Employment in High Technology, he organized civil rights, professional and labor groups nationally to resist discrimination in technology hiring.

In November, he will announce the 10th annual 50 Most Important African-Americans in Technology.

For the past 21 years, he’s led the multimedia publishing firm eAccess Corp. and edited its signature book series, Our Roots Run Deep: the Black Experience in California, Vols. 1-4.  That has extended into the public television documentary of the same name and the one-woman play Queen Calafia: Ruler of California, depicting the allegorical black warrior whose epic gave the Golden State its name.  Preserving that heritage is the topic of the third annual Preserving California Black Heritage conference Sept. 30-Oct. 2, 2009 in San Francisco.

To contact him for speaking engagements or interviews, call 415-240-3537 or email executiveeditor@blackmoney.com