Black culture on the Net.

• Author: McKissack, Fredrick, Jr.
• Position: NetNoir on America Online

Which on-line service first featured a question-and-answer session with a sitting head of state? If you guessed it was CompuServe hosting a "town meeting" with President Bill Clinton, you'd be wrong. NetNoir, the new Afrocentric address on America Online, had Haitian President Jean-Bertrand Aristide over for a chat with computer users on July 5.

Surprised? So was the company's president and CEO, E. David Ellington.

Ellington, a Los Angeles-based lawyer with a background in international law as well as multimedia/new technology law, remembers a board meeting where he said he wanted to do something memorable and imaginative during the first few days NetNoir was being used by America Online members.

"Charlayne Hunter-Gault, who's a member of our advisory board, said, 'Why don't I call the [Haitian presidential] palace,'" Ellington recalls. "I said, 'OK, you do that.'"

Ellington is still excited about the historic event.

"It was a black culture that was the first to do this," he said. "If that's not forward-thinking, I don't know what is."

NetNoir debuted for America Online's three million subscribers on June 19 or June-teenth, the oldest African-American holiday.

A few non-blacks visit the board from time to time. These visits have on occasion caused quite a stir among some of the service's black users, whom Ellington thinks are misguided in wanting to limit the board to the brothers and sisters.

"From time to time I have to go on-line and say, 'Hey, ya'll cool out for a while,'" Ellington said. "If your interests are genuine, and you want to support and celebrate Afrocentric culture, then come on in here. If you want to debate affirmative action, I want you to be here."

The service was launched with four departments: music, sports, education, and business. There will be a total of eighteen departments added within the next year and a half, including film, health, women's issues, politics, religion, and comics.

Content providers to NetNoir include VIBE magazine, Perspective Records, Motown Records, AmeriCares, and Blue Marlin, a specialty athletic apparel company based in San Francisco that is providing...