Activists, pundits, politicians, and the press frequently proclaim today's digitally mediated racial justice activism the new civil rights movement. As Charlton D. McIlwain shows in this book, the story of racial justice movement organizing online is much longer and varied than most people know. In fact, it spans nearly five decades and involves a varied group of engineers, entrepreneurs, hobbyists, journalists, and activists. But this is a history that is virtually
unknown even in our current age of Google, Facebook, Twitter, and Black Lives Matter. Beginning with the simultaneous rise of civil rights and computer revolutions in the 1960s,
McIlwain, for the first time, chronicles the long relationship between African Americans, computing technology, and the Internet. In turn, he argues that the forgotten figures who worked to make black politics central to the Internet's birth and evolution paved the way for today's explosion of racial justice activism. From the 1960s to present, the book examines how computing technology has been used to neutralize the threat that black people pose to the existing racial order, but also how
black people seized these new computing tools to build community, wealth, and wage a war for racial justice.Through archival sources and the voices of many of those who lived and made this history, Black
Software centralizes African Americans' role in the Internet's creation and evolution, illuminating both the limits and possibilities for using digital technology to push for racial justice in the United States and across the globe.
Activists, pundits, politicians, and the press frequently proclaim today's digitally mediated racial justice activism the new civil rights movement. As Charlton D. McIlwain shows in this book, the story of racial justice movement organizing online is much longer and varied than most people know. In fact, it spans nearly five decades and involves a varied group of engineers, entrepreneurs, hobbyists, journalists, and activists. But this is a history that is virtually
unknown even in our current age of Google, Facebook, Twitter, and Black Lives Matter. Beginning with the simultaneous rise of civil rights and computer revolutions in the 1960s,
McIlwain, for the first time, chronicles the long relationship between African Americans, computing technology, and the Internet. In turn, he argues that the forgotten figures who worked to make black politics central to the Internet's birth and evolution paved the way for today's explosion of racial justice activism. From the 1960s to present, the book examines how computing technology has been used to neutralize the threat that black people pose to the existing racial order, but also how
black people seized these new computing tools to build community, wealth, and wage a war for racial justice.Through archival sources and the voices of many of those who lived and made this history, Black
Software centralizes African Americans' role in the Internet's creation and evolution, illuminating both the limits and possibilities for using digital technology to push for racial justice in the United States and across the globe.
Prologue
Chapter One: The Great Equalizer
Chapter Two: Different Strokes
Chapter Three: The Roxbury Shake
Chapter Four: The Vanguard
Chapter Five: Black Software Comes to Cambridge
Chapter Six: The Electronic Village Needs an Organizer
Chapter Seven: Want Ad for a Revolution
Chapter Eight: The Battle for (Black) Cyberspace
Chapter Nine: 100 Years Black: A Cautionary Tale
Chapter 10: Taking IT to the Streets
Chapter Eleven: Collision Course
Chapter Twelve: The Revolution, Brought to You by IBM
Chapter Thirteen: The Committeemen
Chapter Fourteen: What Happened at the Homestead
Chapter Fifteen: Kansas City Burning
Chapter Sixteen: The Man's Best Friend
Chapter Seventeen: Digital Technology: Our Past Is Prologue
Notes
Bibliography
Index
Charlton D. McIlwain is Vice Provost of Faculty Engagement & Development at New York University, and Professor of Media, Culture, and Communication at NYU's Steinhardt School. He is also the Founder of the Center for Critical Race & Digital Studies, and the co-author of Race Appeal: How Candidates Invoke Race in U.S. Political Campaigns, winner of the 2012 APSA Ralph Bunche Award.
"McIlwain's book [is an] utterly compelling demonstratio[n] of the
contributions black people have made, and struggle to make still,
to modern culture." -- Lilian Anekwe, New Scientist
"A poetic tour de force. By amplifying black voices and their
stories, McIlwain peels back a layer of overwritten history to
reveal how technology and race have always been entwined. This
book's rhythmic drumbeat and call to action will energize your
soul." -- danah boyd, Principal Researcher, Microsoft Research and
Founder of Data and Society
"McIlwain has written the first digital history book that explains
in crystal clear terms eactly how Big Tech came to be an engine for
inequality. Black Software is an utterly fascinating, painstakingly
researched origin story of black cyberculture...It will change the
way you think about computers, fairness, racial identity, and
America as a technological nation." -- Lisa Nakamura, Gwendolyn
Calvert Baker Collegiate Professor and Director the Digital
Studies Institute, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor
"Black Software imaginatively reprograms late twentieth-century
digital history with a revelatory account of the black men and
women who are its hidden figures. Unsung innovator are recovered as
the forerunners of #BlackLivesMatter, #BlackTwitter, and #MeToo in
this detailed, creative and crucial rendering of the tech
communities that-against both the odds and countervailing
forces-inspired today's hashtag politics." -- Alondra Nelson,
Harold F. Linder
Professor of Social Science, Institute for Advanced Study
"Black Software is one of the most moving and important books about
the history of digital culture and politics in the United States.
Charlton McIlwain tells stirring stories of those who moved the
world a bit closer to racial justice and relates broad account of
the social and political forces that worked against the interests
of African Americans." -- Siva Vaidhyanatha, author of Antisocial
Media: How Facebook Disconnects Us and Undermines
Democracy
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