Benjamin Mchie is the founder and executive director of The African American Registry. (www.aaregistry.org).   The Registry is one of the most comprehensive databases of African American heritage online containing thousands of historical nuggets and hundreds of videos. The Registry draws more than 80,000 unique visitors a month from more than 150 countries and territories. 

Ben grew up in a working-class neighborhood, near 40th and Clinton in south Minneapolis. He and his friends spent their free time in sports, especially baseball; ice skating, dancing and even participating in an urban 4-H Club. He became interested in theater in high school, and often appeared in high school plays. 

Ben received his B.A. in Speech Communication from California State University Long Beach in 1974. He came back to the Twin Cities and spent over 30 years behind a microphone on local radio as a disc jockey and as an independent camera operator for local TV stations, ESPN and other outlets. 

He began standing up for racial causes long before he founded the Registry. He was one of the plaintiffs in a 1969 lawsuit that integrated the Minneapolis Fire Department, and in 1981 he left his job as a KQRS disc jockey after he said his new boss told him “You sound too black.”

In 1999 as he was watching Dan Rather on the news one evening, his life changed.  Rather announced that a   ‘Civil rights stalwart dies in Alabama.‘ Ben was sure it would be someone he’d heard of. Instead it was a name he didn’t know-Frank Johnson, a judge.

“And I’m looking at the Julian Bonds and Andrew Young’s of the world saying ‘Without his legal expertise there wouldn’t have been a civil rights movement.’ So I started thinking it would be great if we could do something every day so that people would know more about us in other months besides February,” said Ben.

Shortly after that moment, Ben launched the African American Registry site and began inputting birthdays and bios of well-known and little-known African Americans. He continued working as a videographer but spent most of the rest of his time at the Registry, eventually adding a quarterly newsletter that goes to subscribers and HD Videos to the Registry in order to “normalize the history and focus the heritage.”  The videos contain interviews with famous African Americans as well as elders and young people who were only known to their own circle of family and friends.

Ben’s family history also had an important impact on his desire to found the Registry, His mother had contributed to a book called ‘Every Woman Has a Story in 1982, with a chapter called “Don’t Ever Let the Sun Set on Your Anger.” His great-uncle, John Elijah Ford, was the first black person to graduate from the Chicago Theological Seminary, and his father’s older sister, Frances Mchie, had integrated the University of Minnesota’s nursing school in 1929.  She was the first African American person to graduate from the University’s Nursing Program in1932 and was the first African American nurse to be hired in Minnesota.  In her honor Ben created a nursing scholarship for people of color.

The Harlem Renaissance, which was the center  of black literary and musical culture following World War I in the Harlem section of New York City had an important influence on him .‘The New Negro,’ an anthology of fiction, poetry and essays on African and African American art and literature, written during that period, had a huge effect on how he shaped the Registry.

“I believe The African American Registry takes the baton from that book, and talks about the new normal, that is, it talks about the African American experience from an American experience,” Ben said. “All of our contributions that have helped make this country so great, and the more that we know about that, meaning all of us, not just African Americans, I think our country could be even better than it is.”

Ben now specializes in African American Heritage by blending its history and rich culture.  He also speaks to educators, students, corporate and civic organizations.  As an Education Consultant through The African American Registry, his organization trains K-12 teachers to be more inclusive of African American heritage in all subjects, everyday. Ben’s mission, like his website, is to spread America’s black history throughout the calendar.

“We train teachers to use our material every day, not just Black History Month,” Mchie said. “Our goal is to look at creating a year-round affirmation of the black experience.”

Ben has been featured on the BBC, TV Asahi and HBO VICE News. As creator of the Teacher’s Forum, his influence ranges from E-12 classrooms to Post-Secondary schools. He has been a panelist at National and Global conferences on race and education.

Ben was a recipient of Governor Mark Dayton’s 31st annual Martin Luther King Day “LifeTime Achievement” award. When presenting the  award,  Dayton said,  “that the Governor’s Council strongly believes that Benjamin Mchie, who has demonstrated years of leadership, made significant impacts on our communities and in the state, and has continuously advanced causes of human and civil rights throughout his lifetime.”