A SAD BUT TRUE STORY FROM SILICON VALLEY

This was Stanford Research or SRI International where Silicon Valley first started.  The main founders of Fairchild Semiconductor had all worked for SRI.

 

Living in the south San Francisco Bay Area, going to the local universities, and living most of my adult life in Silicon Valley, I have met and known a number of our valley entrepreneurial successes. 

 

I began my professional career working at Fairchild Semiconductor, when most people outside the area thought a semiconductor was a “½ of a conductor”, or whatever that was supposed to mean. 

From Fairchild, I moved on to Memorex, and then I worked my way up through a number of valley high-tech start-ups.  My early technology customers included Xerox Research, Shugart Assocates (The predecessor to Seagate Technology) Diablo Systems (1^st dot-matrix computer printer), Varian Associates (medical systems), H-P (Back before they were into computers and were still only making test equipment) and of course, IBM (When they had first developed the 14”computer disk drive.).

The point is that I was able to witness from the early 1960’s, the morphing of what was originally an agricultural valley of apricots, prunes, cherries, flowers and vegetables, and where the area was then called the, “Valley of Heart’s Delight”.  This area of fruit trees and tomatoes eventually became what is now the headquarters of some of the world’s greatest high-tech companies including Apple, H-P, Intel, Cisco Systems, Adobe and a plethora of other high-tech operations.

 The two most famous Silicon Valley entrepreneur's, Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak  introducing the then revolutionary Apple IIc

One company that is still around today that had started in 1977 is Rod L Electronics, and it was one that I was not even aware of up until now.  The reason for that was, and is, that it was a company that worked with computer languages, which was far away from my technical focus back in the early days.

The reason that I bring up this local company today is that the company founder, Roy L. Clay Sr., who is still Rod L Electronic’s CEO, Mr. Clay has written a very moving article recently for the valley’s San Jose Mercury News.

I thought it might be interesting for my readers to learn about a local Silicon Valley success story that goes way back to a mid-west town that only became a national story over the past couple of months.

As it turns out, Mr. Roy Clay Sr., who recently celebrated his 85^th birthday, is an African American that was one of the first black graduates of the University of St. Louis.  Then, back in 1961, Mr. Clay’s abilities and his career eventually brought him out to Silicon Valley.  After working for major valley companies such as H-P, Kleiner-Perkins, Control Data and Compaq, Mr. Clay then founded his own company, Roy L Electronics.  Mr. Clay was also later elected to the Palo Alto City Council and he also became the city’s Vice Mayor.  The rest has now just become local history.

What makes this story so interesting is that Mr. Clay was born and raised in a small suburb of St. Louis.  The town was Kinloch, Mo., and this all black community is right next to another suburb of St. Louis known as Ferguson, Mo.  Yes, the same Ferguson that is now very famous for being the location of the killing of the unarmed black teenager, Michael Brown, by a Ferguson police officer.

The point of Mr. Clay’s article is that, Mr. Brown’s killing unfortunately reminded Mr. Clay of an episode that he had personally experienced decades ago in this same Missouri town. 

As the story goes, being a young teenager and during the Summer, Mr. Clay would walk a mile from his Kinloch home into the mostly white town of Ferguson.  He would then knock on the doors of the local residence asking if there was any available work for mowing their lawns, pulling weeds, or other chores where he could earn up to 3 dollars a day.

On one hot and humid day in August, on his way home from working, young Clay had stopped at a corner grocery store to buy a soda.  Since you weren’t allowed to drink the soda inside the store, he went outside and sat on the curb.  A Ferguson patrol car then drove up and a police officer stepped out of the car.  The officer asked what the young black teenager was doing there in Ferguson.  The young man said he had stopped there for a soda on the way home from working in the neighborhood homes and yards.

The officer then handcuffed the Mr. Clay, stuck him in the back seat and drove him back to the center of Kinloch.  

What Mr. Clay still remembers is what he was thinking while in the back seat of that patrol car.  He was thinking that he knew there was a pond on the way to downtown Kinloch and he was envisioning the very worst.  He was wondering just how he would try to escape if he were taken down to the pond.

But fortunately for him, the patrol car finally stopped and he was taken out of the back seat.  The handcuffs were then removed and the officer said: “Nig---r, don’t ever let me catch you again in Ferguson.”

When young Mr. Clay reached home he excitedly told his mother what he had just experienced.  She responded with, “You will experience racism for rest of your life, but don’t ever let that be a reason why you don’t succeed.”

Mr. Clay had decided to write this article for the local paper as he wanted to pass on the personal experience that he had dealt with in that same community where Michael Brown was gunned down.  Yes, when Mr. Clay had been in Ferguson, the population of black people was next to nothing.  But today, it is about 67% of Ferguson’s total population.

Regardless of this difference today, Mr. Clay is making the point that apparently for the local black residents, nothing much has changed in this St. Louis suburb.

Mr. Clay finished his article with the hope that people looking at young black men that could be shot down in the streets, such as was the likes of Michael Brown, or Trayvon Martin or Oscar Grant, that they instead be looked at as potential candidates for “cutting edge jobs or entrepreneurships”.  Because that was what had eventually become of the young, black, Mr. Roy Clay.

I agree that Mr. Roy Clay Senior’s wish is an excellent way to feel in his thinking forward, and it probably carries a number of other supporters from those of us living here in this high-tech valley.

But for all those communities such as Ferguson, Missouri, that cross this very large and diverse country, it is unfortunately, probably just a pipe dream.

Having been born in Virginia, and knowing what it is still like back in that region where I was born, I think I can make this statement with a bit of sad certainty.

Copyright, G.Ater  2014