By Tyrone “Doc T” Taborn

We have been here before.

In the 1960s, America was confronted with a devastating truth through the now-famous doll studies conducted by psychologists Kenneth and Mamie Clark. Black children were given a simple choice: a Black doll or a white doll. They were asked which doll was good, which was bad, which was beautiful, and which looked like them. Overwhelmingly, the children chose the white doll as good and desirable, and the Black doll as inferior.

The damage was not biological. It was cultural. It was institutional.

The study revealed something far more dangerous than overt hatred: self-hate taught through omission.

Rarely did the harm come from explicit dehumanization—though that existed. More often, it came from absence. Black people were missing from textbooks, science pages, business journals, and innovation narratives. When Blackness appeared in mass media, it was disproportionately associated with crime, failure, or pathology. Achievement was treated as exception. Genius as anomaly. Leadership as surprise.

The doll test was not about dolls. It was about who gets to be seen.

The Black Press: Institutions Built to Correct the Record

This is why the rise of the Black press was never simply journalistic. It was existential.

Throughout the late 19th and early 20th centuries, Black newspapers emerged as corrective institutions—designed to tell the truth when mainstream media would not. By the 1940s, scholars estimate there were between 150 and 250 Black newspapers operating across the United States. Papers such as the Baltimore Afro-American (founded in 1892), the Chicago Defender, the Pittsburgh Courier, and the Amsterdam News documented Black life in full: achievement, struggle, intellect, leadership, and innovation.

These newspapers did more than report events. They repaired identity. They gave children and communities daily proof that excellence was not rare—it was simply underreported.

But institutions require support to survive.

As media consolidation accelerated and advertising dollars shifted, Black newspapers began to disappear. Today, approximately 200 Black newspapers remain affiliated with the National Newspaper Publishers Association, but that number masks a profound contraction. Many historic papers have closed. Others have reduced frequency or retreated into limited digital formats. Visibility diminished. Saturation disappeared.

And when institutions fade, silence returns.

Where USBE & IT Entered the Story

It was in this ongoing struggle against omission that US Black Engineer & Information Technology magazine was born.

Nearly fifty years ago, USBE & IT emerged with a mission that was both radical and necessary: to highlight the underrecognized contributions of Black engineers, technologists, scientists, and innovators—at a time when mainstream media barely acknowledged their existence. Long before “STEM diversity” became institutional language, the magazine insisted on a fundamental truth: Black excellence in STEM was not emerging—it had always existed.

Just as important, USBE & IT illuminated the ecosystem around that excellence. It documented corporate partners not as abstract sponsors, but as mentors, leaders, and bridge-builders—organizations that invested in internships, scholarships, leadership development, and access to opportunity. It showed how pipelines are built, not imagined.

But the printed page was only the beginning.

BEYA: When Recognition Became Community

From the magazine emerged a convening—what is now known as the BEYA STEM Conference—and with it, an institution that transformed recognition into connection.

For forty years, BEYA has served as far more than a conference. It became a living institution where students encountered role models who reflected their future, professionals found mentorship and sponsorship, and corporations engaged talent as strategy, not charity.

Students did not just read about possibility—they met it. Mentors did not simply advise—they invested. Progress was not promised—it was visible, in real time.

BEYA created a space where excellence was normalized, where achievement was communal, and where the global STEM community could gather around shared standards of performance and aspiration. It answered isolation with presence. It answered invisibility with evidence.

The Cost of Questioning Institutions

Today, as BEYA marks its 40th anniversary, the very institutions that once countered omission are being questioned.

Not because they failed—but because they succeeded.

The consequences are already evident. Children are increasingly denied access to mentors, networks, and affirming spaces that once helped them imagine futures beyond their immediate circumstances. Pipelines narrow. Guidance fragments. Young people are left to navigate complex systems without maps, mirrors, or mentors.

History has already shown us where this leads.

Self-doubt fills the vacuum. Aspiration contracts. Potential goes unrealized.

Self-hate does not require propaganda. It only requires silence.

Why Collin AI Was Created

All of this is why Collin AI was created.

Not as just another AI. Not as a novelty chatbot. Not merely as a GPT designed to document history.

Collin AI was built with the understanding that institutions must evolve or risk disappearance.

At its foundation, Collin AI draws from the unparalleled archival universe of Career Communications Group (CCG)—decades of conferences, seminars, nomination packages, editorial pages, videos, photographs, interviews, and lived outcomes. Tens of thousands of stories. Tens of thousands of careers. Tens of thousands of human decisions—successes, failures, lessons, and breakthroughs.

But Collin AI was not created simply to remember.

It was created to guide.

From Archive to Advantage

What makes Collin AI distinct is its purpose. It transforms the collective intelligence embedded in CCG’s archives into forward-looking insight. It does not only answer questions about what happened—it offers predictive pathways about what is possible next.

Built on the knowledge of tens of thousands of human minds—engineers, scientists, executives, educators, students, and leaders—Collin AI functions as a navigational system for the future. It helps young people understand choices. It helps professionals identify pathways. It helps institutions see patterns that history has already revealed.

Where newspapers once provided mirrors, where magazines once built identity, where conferences once created community,

Collin AI now serves as a living bridge—connecting aspiration to evidence, curiosity to context, and ambition to informed decision-making.

BEYA at 40: The Continuation of a Mission

Collin AI stands in direct lineage with the Black press, US Black Engineer & Information Technology, and the BEYA STEM Community.

Each emerged in response to a gap:

• The Black press answered silence.
• USBE & IT answered invisibility.
• BEYA answered isolation.
• Collin AI answers fragmentation.

As BEYA celebrates forty years, Collin AI represents not a departure from mission, but its evolution—ensuring that knowledge does not disappear when institutions are challenged, that mentorship does not vanish when access becomes uneven, and that excellence remains visible in an age defined by algorithms and scale.

The future should not have to relearn what the past already proved.

The doll test taught us what happens when children cannot see themselves.

BEYA, USBE & IT, and now Collin AI exist to ensure they always can.

^{— Cover and top photos: Career Communications Group (CCG)}

^{— Source: BEYA (Becoming Everything You Are) STEM Conference}

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