MISSION

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Michigan Black Expo, Inc. (MBEI) was founded on May 9, 1995 as a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization to establish a Michigan counterpart of Indiana Black Expo, Inc. (IBEI) and Rev. Jesse Jackson’s Chicago Rainbow Coalition Black Expo to engage employment creation, racism abatement and the bringing together of diverse Michiganites by creating a perpetual non-profit society-enhancement industry of events, products, services and institutions that embody the most positive and unifying elements of the African-descended Experience (based in Downtown Grand Rapids' Heartside District).

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HISTORY

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In Summer 1993, Morgan State University-Baltimore and Ottawa Hills High School-GRPS alum Rudolph Treece conversed with mentor Nuumo Taalib El Amin about creating a sister organization of Indiana Black Expo, Inc. (IBEI) that would remediate Grand Rapids' intense sense of isolation, hopelessness and marginalization that had long been the common vexation of African-descended people in the region.  After convincing Ottawa Hills alum Michael Mohan and Kent County 61st District Court Judge Benjamin Logan to join their efforts, the Judge put them in contact with his Kappa Alpha Psi Fraternity Brother and IBEI Co-Founder/President Rev. Charles Williams to obtain his insight on the matter.  Shortly thereafter in April 1994, Rev. Williams invited the Grand Rapids delegation to Indianapolis for what would become the seminal moment that would enable MBEI to establish its State Headquarters the next year in Downtown Grand Rapids on May 9, 1995.  Today, MBEI is focused earnestly on designing and methodically implementing the first two of its 18 career preparation CIRCLE of HOPE (COH) institutions: Independent Media CIRCLE of HOPE (INDMediaCOH) and Tech CIRCLE of HOPE (TechCOH).

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WHY WAS MBEI CREATED?

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MBEI was created because of the historic intersection of 1] a Grand Rapids Public Schools (GRPS) alum taking literally from Kindergarten-12th grade the GRPS Mandate (i.e. - "....to Learn Within Its Institutions, to Go Away to College After Graduation to Learn More and then to Return to GR to Make It and the World Around It a Better Place….") and 2] that GRPS graduate yearning for a world-class future for the GR hometown that he loved deeply yet had shown him throughout his life the overt and covert anti-Blackness that it held for him and the people he loved.

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The result was the creation of an organization that would be framed in those two intersections and that today is focused on implementing the career and heritage-reinforcement infrastructure for equipping marginalized BIPOC young people and their allies with the independent media production education institutions for preparing them to be the critical mass of online free press journalism, cinema/theatre, tv/video/radio broadcasting, publishing & urban music professionals required to undergird the establishment of GR as the independent media production support hub for NYC, LA, CHI and ATL; positioned in the mid-point metropolitan area of the Chicago - Grand Rapids - Detroit corridor; the utility and institutions for guiding our youth away from futures of poverty, incarceration and the associated premature passing away by instead providing the pathway for them to become the beneficent and successful Young Leaders of Tomorrow that will contribute significantly to GR’s rise as a world-class and inclusive urban center as MBEI's Co-Founders envisioned it.