Soul of Technology.com
Get In The Picture Prepare Today for the Future Fewer than 20,000 of the more than 400,000 African-American high school graduates each year have completed the courses which would prepare them for an education in a computer science, telecommunications or engineering curriculum. Yet more than 400,000 African-Americans hold jobs in those fields, which means that upcoming generations are more than capable of competing in these disciplines. That’s 200 times more jobs than all the black professional athletes combined. Raise your sights and follow in the footsteps of the 2007 50 Most Important African-Americans in Technology.
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
Discovering the Overlooked Overachievers SAN FRANCISCO -- The process of creating the eight annual 50 Most Important African-Americans in Technology began in 1998 when Silicon Valley Hall of Engineering members Roy Clay and Dr. Frank Greene asked former San Jose Business Journal editor John William Templeton, now president/executive editor of eAccess Corp. in San Francisco, to prepare a history of black contributions to high technology for an exhibition at the Tech Museum of Innovation. Clay and Greene, known as the “godfathers” of black technology, continue to share information about impressive standouts among the more than 400,000 African-Americans who work in high technology, the largest African-American professional group -- more than five times doctors and lawyers combined. Templeton coined the term “overlooked overachievers” in his 1992 book Success Secrets of Black Executives to describe the almost invisible way in which the most successful African-American bottom line technologists have moved up the ranks. The objective of the annual list is to share their accomplishments with students, who often fail to take the necessary coursework for highly-paid, professionally rewarding and socially useful careers because they can not identify with scientists. For teachers, the book The Black Students Internet Guide provides hundreds of sites which help overcome those barriers. Parents can visit blackparentsguide.info for straegies to help shape their childen. Freedom Riders of the Cutting Edge When Frank Greene was an electrical engineering student at Washington University in St. Louis, he participated in sit-ins to desegregate the restaurants near the campus. Roy Clay was told after receiving his mathematics degree from St. Louis University in 1951 “sorry, there are no jobs for professional Negroes” when he showed up for a job interview. Their quiet civil rights struggle was at the same time as the more heralded “Mississippi Freedom summer” or “Montgomery bus boycott”. Their greatest weapon was innovation and competence. A new documentary Freedom Riders of the Cutting Edge will be featured as part of the opening of Soul of Technology: 50 Most Important African-Americans in Technology in the lobby of the Palo Alto City Hall. The exhibit opens Monday, Feb. 2 at 250 Hamilton Ave. in Palo Alto.
From left,
Roy Clay Sr.
Dr. Frank Greene
Ron L. Jones
 
featured as
Freedom Riders of
the Cutting Edge in
the Soul of Technology:
50 Most Important
African-Americans in
Technology during February
Infuse the role of black technological pioneers and other important African-American achievers into the daily classroom environment with the Black Students Internet Guide and Our Roots Run Deep: the Black Experience in California, Vols. 1-4. Volume 3 covers the role of Silicon Valley’s black pioneers. Volume 4 gives lesson plans.http://www.blackpressonline.com/index.htmlshapeimage_5_link_0