New Book Reveals How Black People in LA Have Always Been Technologically Behind
A decade after its initial release, author Clinton Galloway reintroduces Anatomy of a Hustle: Cable Comes to South Central L.A. to today’s more discerning audiences. This 354-page tome chronicles technology deprivation and a grievance with L.A. policymakers that made it all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court.
The 2025 inauguration of the 47th president of the United States has Black voters feeling disillusioned and betrayed as executive orders target DE&I initiatives and propose rollbacks of existing policies. Voters are now seemingly more astute than ever. Those who don’t believe there may have been foul analytics at play have already decided for themselves who to blame. However, unresolved grievances among constituents can leave even the experts underestimating the margin of error in a tight political race, a factor now more relevant than ever.
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The aftermath of the Watts Riots left South Central, Los Angeles, overrun with violence, poverty, and educational disparities. In 1978, siblings Clinton and Carl Galloway recognized the potential of cable programming to enhance learning and development, financial decisions, and overall health within a viewing audience. Cable television and their company, Preferred Communications, were at the forefront of technology. They saw the contract for installing the South Central-Harbor network as an opportunity that could foster economic growth in South Central’s Black and Latino communities, creating over five thousand jobs over ten years. Clinton Galloway began hosting segments of educational programming for a cable television show, Utilities Outlook, filmed in Beverly Hills and aired on the local financial channel.
Understanding South Central comprised approximately half a million lower-income residents of Black and Latin ancestry, the brothers set out to establish the country’s first black-owned cable franchise in South Central, Los Angeles, with a mission to provide meaningful programming for the area. A C.P.A. for a Beverly Hills investment bank and a medical doctor, respectively, Clinton and Carl forged alliances with others more knowledgeable about the cable franchise application process: a more knowledgeable multiple system cable operator with several operating cable television systems and another minority business owner with an active history of submissions, but no winning bids.
The two then forged ahead and created a viable business plan that included logistics for installing the network’s infrastructure, their specifics for programming, and funding through their already established partnerships, completing the application to build the South Central-Harbor franchise in 1980.
Anatomy of a Hustle: Cable Comes to South Central L.A. is a detailed account of their ordeal, revealing the cost of doing business in L.A. With themes now more relevant than ever, Galloway’s account delves into the complexities of bureaucracy and corruption. It is a testament to the resilience required to succeed in a competitive business landscape when government contracting lacks transparency. This scathing memoir details how the desire to become the first Black-owned cable network became a bureaucratic nightmare and an uphill legal battle. The city of Los Angeles vs. Preferred Communications was the culmination of years of opposition that made it all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court in a sweep of litigation and appeals.
After over a decade of strategizing, a victory in the U.S. Supreme Court in 1986 (ruling technology denial and the actions of the city of Los Angeles constituted a violation of First Amendment rights for all of South Central), plus several small victories, Clinton and his brother were unsuccessful. To make matters worse, in 1993, the U.S. Congress passed a law stating that regardless of the civil rights violations that had occurred during the cable television franchising disputes—yes, there were many—courts would award no damages against any city in the United States. This new law virtually ended their cable television journey and terminated Clinton and Carl’s case without proper recompense or their share of what would soon become a multibillion-dollar industry. Our government had usurped the people. Corporations usurped our government, and ultimately, our poorest communities bore the brunt of that horrible burden.
While the exclusion of Preferred Communications may not read as racial discrimination because most of the key players are Black, the story reveals how factions within the Black community can stand in the way of progress for all. Still, burning questions remain: Why would Preferred Communications face such opposition when highly qualified and entering the application process as the only company interested in building the infrastructure? How did a seemingly straightforward application process go awry? Was the opposition in acquiring the contract for the South Central-Harbor franchise blatant racial discrimination, favoritism, or selfish self-interest? Who among the key players was sincere? Readers are invited into the heart of this story to sift through the details and determine for themselves.
This burning testimony may be a scathing rebuke of some of the most influential politicians in history. However, this ordeal became a lifelong battle for Carl and Clinton Galloway, who saw this cause as the technology deprivation of South Central, Los Angeles, and poor black communities across the United States of America, as well as the blatant disregard of the 1986 U.S. Supreme Court ruling.
In his 1963 “Letter from Birmingham Jail,” the Reverend Dr Martin Luther King Junior stated, “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.” Who knew injustice could also leave an opening for tyranny?
Anatomy of a Hustle: Cable Comes to South Central L.A. reveals the exorbitant costs, both the financial devastation and the emotional toll, these entrepreneurs endured as they forged through political maneuvering and legal battles that consumed years of their lives.
Call Galloway died from leukemia in 2008. This story outlines the experience these brothers endured and fulfills a deathbed promise Clinton Galloway made to his brother Carl in his final days.
“A stinging indictment of urban politics-as-usual.” — Kirkus
NOTES TO EDITORS
Anatomy of a Hustle: Cable Comes to South Central L.A. is available online on Amazon and Barnes & Noble.
For interviews, review copies, or speaking engagements, please contact Clinton Galloway via email to clinto@msn.com
nZinga Austin is also the Co-publisher of Our Black News Scoop and Southeast Queens Scoop. The documentary of about 1/2 hr long is getting rave reviews.
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