Tenth annual 50 Most Important African-Americans in Technology announced Nov. 9

The first gathering to recognize the 50 Most Important African-Americans in Technology was a special moment for the family of Ronald Lee Jones.

There we were in the California African-American Museum in Los Angeles’ Exposition Park, where just 15 years earlier, Jones had been standing on the sidewalk, hawking Olympic merchandise.

It was 1999, the year Prince had pointed to, and we had lots to party about.  Jones had been recognized as the inventor of the decade by Micro-Computer News for creating the Raster Image Processor to generate large format graphics from personal computers.  We gave him a special award for innovation with  lots of nieces and nephews and other family members, plus White House aides Jena Roscoe and Lori Perine looking on.

Mike Beasley, CEO of Icing Software, an IBM intrapreneural venture, was our Pinnacle Award winner.  He not only was a software management impresario, but we were moved by his service as the chairman of the MESA program for the University of California system, giving thousands of young people the opportunity to follow in his footsteps.

After the event, Mike and other 50 Most selectees joined us once a week at the Computer Academy at San Francisco’s Thurgood Marshall High School to motivate a class of special education students to create a business plan to start their own software company.

Roy Clay Sr., the man who had helped greenlight Intel, Compaq and Tandem, reviewed their submission and was quite impressed.

As we announce the 10th annual list of the 50 Most Important African-Americans in Technology on Monday, Nov. 9, I’m filled with memories of the legions of overlooked overachievers who presaged the change in the national climate by demonstrating that business excellence and community impact were not mutually exclusive.

When a young man named Obama emerged from the ranks of Illinois’ legislature with a pedigree of achievement and organizing, I remember thinking, he’s just like the folks who’ve been on the 50 Most list.

After being prompted by Clay and Dr. Frank Greene, his fellow member of the Silicon Valley Engineering Hall of Fame, to record the technical accomplishments of black computer professionals in an exhibition at the Tech Museum of Innovation in 1998, we cast the net nationally to find folks like Philip Emeagwali, who maintained an ongoing conversation with more than 150,000 school children on his website.

Every year since, there have been new landmarks to innovation and equity.  Dr. Greene could have rested on his laurels several decades ago, but even today presents his VRE Leadership Model classes in settings ranging from corporate board rooms to elementary classrooms.

Earlier this year, Earl Stafford stepped out of obscurity to give thousands an opportunity to enjoy the inauguration of Obama in his People’s Inaugural Ball, thanks to his success with Unitech.

Our reason for seeking out these incredible people is that there are many more like them waiting for an opportunity to show their dynamic creative spark.  We continue to insist that the ranks of African-American computer professionals should double to at least one million.

If Prince George’s County, MD can attract 14,000 African-American computer workers, then there’s no reason other locales can not aggregate the training, education and recruitment to reach those heights.

Our annual report, Silicon Ceiling 9, will show how few areas are making that effort, when we release it on Monday.  Billions of federal tax dollars are pouring into universities which can not find a dozen black engineering students and companies which do not even file required equal opportunity reports.

But it is the grace, fortitude and determination of the people who have made up the 50 Most Important African-Americans in Technology that demonstrate the business case for the same diversity in technology which has revitalized sports leagues in the past 50 years.

In our documentary Freedom Riders of the Cutting Edge, Roy Clay remarks that he was a pretty good third baseman and could have been brought into major league baseball at about the same time as Jackie Robinson.

Instead he got a degree in mathematics and became the Jackie Robinson of high tech, programming the first computer for a company which had told him there were “no jobs for professional Negroes” years before.

Clay and Greene and Jerry Lawson opened the doors for the schoolkids like Ron Jones or Mike Beasley to aspire to jobs in Silicon Valley.   We reflected on the legacy Ron Jones left during our ninth observance at Palo Alto City Hall earlier this year as his former attorney Ron Katz recalled what made the late Jones so special.  Another of our perennial 50 Most selectees, Chuck Smith of AT&T, also grew up as a kid with a learning disability in south Los Angeles.

The thoughts were tempered by the fact that we have and had made the effort to recognize the many African-Americans who have overcome doubters, nay-sayers and bigots to operate in the most highly technical fields with the same style they’ve brought to golf courses, tennis courts and football fields.

Any child who picks up The Black Students Internet Guide can see dozens of folks who look just like them, running some of the most advanced companies in the world.

I’ve always been impressed by the humility and shyness of these standouts, who have rarely sought the limelight.  But give them an opportunity to reach out to youth, and their glow will illuminate a stadium.

Ron Jones once covered the Minnesota Metrodome with posters to prove anything was possible.

The tenth annual 50 Most Important African-Americans in Technology list will also make the exact same point.

Selectees will join us Jan. 15, 2010 at Pier One, Port of San Francisco for a symposium on innovation and equity from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m.