Day 20 Black History Month 2021 - Dr. Clarence Ellis

Dr. Clarence Ellis (May 1943 – May 2014)

For day 20 of Black History Month, we’d like to highlight Clarence Ellis, an American computer scientist and educator and the first African American to receive a PhD in Computer Science in 1969 and the first African American fellow named to the Association of Computing Machinery (ACM).

Clarence Ellis was raised on the South Side of Chicago. When he was a teenager, he got a nightshift job working for a local computer store to help support his family. He was hired more as a security guard, to watch over the computers in the store but because he ended up with a lot of time on his hands, he began to read and study the computer manuals and became a self-taught expert without ever touching the computer.

His family could not afford to send him to college but he was able to obtain a scholarship through his local church. He went on to attend Beloit College and graduated in 1964 with a Bachelor of Science Degree in Math and Physics.

Briefly, he enrolled at MIT’s graduate program but left to involve himself in civil rights activism. He also devoted himself to teaching under-represented youth, computer science and programming and went on to develop a technology known as “groupware”, which allowed several users to collaborate on a document simultaneously. This technology inspired programs like Microsoft’s Sharepoint and Google Docs.

As an educator, one of the courses he taught was “World Simulation: Culture, Technology and Ethics.” The course examined how world governments would flourish if they turned their focus on ethical, economic and social balance.