America at 250: BDPA Marks another Legacy Born in Philadelphia
PHILADELPHIA, PA (bdpatoday®) — In 2026, America celebrates its 250th anniversary, our Semiquincentennial, with the eyes of our nation turned to Philadelphia, the city where liberty was declared and our American experiment continues. It is profoundly fitting that in this same city, in our same year, BDPA, formerly known as Black Data Processing Associates, marks a golden milestone of its own. Founded in Philadelphia in 1975 by the late Earl A. Pace, Jr. and the late David Wimberly, BDPA Philadelphia incorporated in 1976 to open more doors of our emerging computer and data processing industries to African Americans. As BDPA Philadelphia celebrates its 50th anniversary alongside America’s 250th, this convergence tells a great story of our ongoing work of extending Philly and America’s founding promise of continued opportunities deeper into the digital age well beyond our post-quantum era.
National BDPA’s Contributions to America
BDPA’s contributions to America over five decades have run deep. Earl A. Pace, Jr., who began as a programmer trainee at the Pennsylvania Railroad before founding Pace Data Systems, built the Association into a national movement advancing Black professionals “from the classroom to the boardroom.” BDPA trained generations of programmers, systems analysts, cybersecurity specialists, and technology executives by supplying diverse technical talent to corporate America, the federal government, the military, academia, and trade associations such as ACM, CompTIA, and ITSA.
As the nation’s online life migrated from dial-up bulletin board systems (BBSs) and standalone listservs to an open Internet between 1995 and 1998, BDPA like many professional associations of the era, BDPA’s chapters had long relied on dial-up bulletin boards, faxes, and email lists to connect members; the mid-1990s Web changed that almost overnight. The pivotal year was 1996, when the organization launched “BDPA.org” with U.S. Black On-line during BDPACON ’96, its annual National Technology Conference in Atlanta, planting its flag on the World Wide Web just one year after the NSFNET backbone was decommissioned and the Internet was fully opened to commercial traffic. That same year, during the same gathering, the Information Technology Senior Management Forum (ITSMF) was launched by technology executives and senior BDPA Members determined to extend new C-Suite leadership opportunities and enterprise‑level strategies across our tech industry.
For the Culture—Cultivating Industry Partnerships and Professional Networks
Today’s BDPA members stand firmly on the shoulders of freedmen, pioneering technicians, and inventors of African descent who built the bedrock of American infrastructure. From the Civil War’s U.S. Military Telegraph Corps, United States Colored Troops, and Military Railroad Construction Corps who cut wide vegetation swaths for the Union and across the South to deploy and sustain railroads and critical telegraph line, to our early telecommunications innovators who ushered the nation into radio, modern telephony, and digital technology, BDPA carries this legacy forward.
Continuing this legacy, BDPA members and experienced [COBOL] programmers played crucial roles near the turn of this century in preventing a potential global “Y2K” crisis, while establishing lasting enterprise partnerships with DoD/DoW, EDS, HP, HPE, IBM, JEF, NASA, U.S. Air Force, U.S. Navy, Microsoft, Oracle, ITSMF, NNOA, and U.K. Black Tech. Several ‘Big Tech’ mission partners who support BDPA are today’s hyperscalers.
Earl A. Pace, Jr. was inducted into the CompTIA IT Hall of Fame in 2011. His passing in 2022 emphasized a lineage of African American success in technology extending from Civil War battlefields to today’s software‑defined global infrastructures interconnecting our data centers, new Ai systems, and cloud applications. The Association’s global reach we leverage today was built by visionary leaders. Norman Mays, a retired U.S. Army Intelligence Officer of Cleveland, OH founded BDPA Washington, D.C. in 1978 and BDPA Cleveland in 1980. He served as National President from 1981 to 1984, transforming a Philadelphia-idea into a coast-to-coast tech professional network. The late Ollie Morgan of BDPA Chicago served as National President in 1995, guiding BDPA as the Internet era reshaped American business. With close to 400 active members in BDPA Chicago, Mr. Morgan launched the Association’s Corporate Advisory Councils (CAC) and published three newsletters for National BDPA, BDPA Chicago, and the tech community. The late Margaret “Midge” Jennings served as the Association’s first Executive Director, a conference planner for annual BDPACONs, and as a chapter president for BDPA-DC, exemplifying organizational leadership, member recruitment, and member services that carried the organization through its formative decades. The late R. Wayne Hicks of Cincinnati, National President in 2004–2005 and longtime Executive Director of the BDPA Education and Technology Foundation (BETF, founded 1992), championed the fundraising that sustained BDPA’s scholarship and student technology programs nationwide. Annette Yates served as the Association’s Richmond Chapter President growing and sustaining regional programs with local HBCU memberships expanding beyond 300 active members for several years. Perry Carter co-founded BDPA’s student chapter at Temple University with the late Juan Noyles. As a U.S. Marine Corps Data Systems Officer, Carter served as Chief Judge during BDPA’s HSCC in 1987; coached students using Prolog to present their Ai models and schemas during BDPACON ’90; served as BDPACON ’90 Conference Chair in Washington, D.C.; launched BDPA.org during BDPACON ’96 in Atlanta, GA; launched and published bdpatoday® (ISSN 1946-1429) almost 20 years ago in 2007; launched annual CyberEarthTM events, the Association’s annual Earth Day Tech Summits, and he leads annual Exascale Day supercomputing engagements.
The Future of Code—A 40-Year Student Pipeline
One cannot talk about BDPA without talking about our future. The year 2026 also signifies the 40th anniversary of BDPA’s acclaimed High School Computer Competition (HSCC), which was founded in 1986 by Dr. Jesse Bemley from Washington, D.C. For four decades, HSCC has provided a very competitive environment for BDPA Student Members and junior developers (Jr. Devs) to sharpen and excel in software programming, web technologies, DevSecOps, and computing history on a global scale, offering scholarships, internships, and launching STEM careers. Dr. Bemley further advanced this initiative during BDPACON, a 1990 presentation at BDPA’s IT Showcase, which introduced a pioneering youth artificial intelligence (Ai) program that allowed students to create Ai models of teenage mall shopping habits long before today’s current surge in Ai’s interest. Initiatives such as these collectively represent BDPA’s most enduring legacy, continuously nurturing new generations of young technologists who are set to lead America’s economic development and innovation base.
Your American Story Continues
BDPA is an organization born in the mainframe era of the 1970s, matured through “data processing”, analog phone-networks, BBS years of the 1980s, and reinvented itself for the Internet’s new digital age. Infrastructure since 2000 has undergone deep shifts in scale, architecture, and intent, as connectivity-driven ‘Big Data’ needs have given way to today’s Ai imperative of foundational supercomputing layers powering our massive LLM training pipelines and autonomous systems. This remarkable half-century journey is meticulously preserved in The BDPA Story, a book published in 2022 by Ken Wilson, Norman Mays, and the late Earl A. Pace, Jr. For those looking to explore its interactive history, BDPA’s living legacy, complete timelines, and member resources are actively maintained via bdpa.org and bdpatoday.com under “History & Tech Milestones.”
As America honors 250 years of striving toward a more perfect union, BDPA’s 50+ years of professional development and digital activism stand as living proof of a simple truth that more American stories are still being written everyday by new BDPA Members with those determined to widen its promise.
For a greater Nation and a more perfect Union, visit bdpa.org to engage as a Sponsor, a new Member, or a new Chapter.
Fireworks are scheduled late tonight in Philadelphia—HAPPY 250th BIRTHDAY, America!
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- The BDPA Legacy™ Docuseries:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yXHsmjPaBxM&list=PLwwkfkXZ4yRoOVlS15L06IM1css8u0AZ2 - The BDPA Story
https://www.amazon.com/BDPA-Story-American-Technology-Professionals/dp/0578330806/ - bdpatoday® (ISSN 1946-1429)
https://bdpatoday.com - BDPACON ’26
https://bdpa.org/bdpacon26
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