W. Joseph Black was born July 25, 1934 in Carthage, Texas, and was raised in Chicago. He attended the University of Illinois at Chicago and completed his undergraduate education at Columbia University. He later attended the Columbia University School of Architecture and earned his Master of Science degree in Urban Planning. Although Black's career was short-lived, he traveled extensively and held architectural and planning positions in Africa, Latin America, Europe and New York City during the 1960s and 1970s. It was in Harlem, however, that Black chose to make his major architectural and cultural statements.

As a consultant to the New York City Planning Commission, the Model Cities Administration and the New York State Urban Development Corporation, Black undertook comprehensive studies of Harlem's planning needs and designed programs for a variety of community development projects such as the Park Avenue North Study, the St. Nicholas Historic District, and the Fifth Avenue Park Walk. This work, in combination with a long-range architectural research project on Harlem begun in the 1960s increased and deepened his knowledge of, and commitment to, that community.

In 1968 Black received the A.W. Brunner Award from the Architectural League of New York to study the role of black architects and planners in solving critical urban problems. The Brunner award enabled Black to concentrate on the development of a project that included a mixed-income residential, cultural and commercial complex, which he called the “Gateway to Harlem.” He formed the Harlem Music Center (HMC) in 1969 as the first phase of the cultural complex.

The purpose of the Center was to create music workshops, performance areas, archives, facilities for teaching, performing, recording, research and cultural exchange. To assist in the development of the Center, Black enlisted a number of musicians and concerned citizens, including Max Roach, Herbie Hancock, Donald Byrd and Archie Shepp, to serve in a variety of capacities ranging from teaching to service on the advisory board. Although the Harlem Music Center operated for approximately five years, Black was not successful in implementing the residential and commercial components of the Gateway to Harlem complex, and eventually the Harlem Music Center folded.

While Black devoted much of his time to the Harlem Music Center, he continued his involvement in other career activities. Primary among them were the and the projects. originally conceived in 1970 as an exhibition and book project, was sponsored and funded by the Museum of Modern Art. was to be a celebration of Harlem's history and architecture from the seventeenth to the twentieth centuries. After a series of delays, the exhibition opened at the Studio Museum in Harlem in November 1974 and the American Institute of Architects Gallery in Washington, D.C. in 1975. The book project apparently was never completed, although a press release announcing its publication by Architectural Record Books was released in 1976. For the project, Black received a National Endowment for the Arts grant in 1973. This project focused on the many known and unknown builders in this country, 1619 to 1974. The outcome of this project is not clear. In 1975 Black moved to Washington, D.C. He obtained a teaching post at the University of the District of Columbia in the Department of Community Planning and Development, which he held through 1976.

Black was married to Romaine Hill; they had no children. He died of cancer at the age of forty-two in 1977.