Table of Contents

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

About the Author

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.

Reviews

"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