Duke Ellington in Cleveland, 1960. (Photo by James Gayle)
As our recently posted photos suggest, RMW is no stranger to the fine and performing arts. On more than one occasion, I had the pleasure of serving as project director / coordinator for presentations by the Spiritual Gifts Choir at Cleveland’s Severance Hall, home of the world-class Cleveland Orchestra. During their most recent performance in 2013, Prester and Bertha Pickett joined the choir on stage to share a preview of a new play with music, “The Duke on the Queen’s Court.” The brainchild of actor-playwright Prester Pickett, this work is based on the friendship between Duke Ellington and Mahalia Jackson, the “Queen of Gospel Music.”
Dr. Maya Angelou
RMW’s first public program for this year is the Phenomenal Poetry Fest, which will celebrate the life and art of the late Dr. Maya Angelou (1928-2014). The full program announcement appears below, Please meet us at the Maple Heights Library for what promises to be a wonderful event.
–Dr. Regennia N. Williams
Monday, June 30, 2014, 7:00 – 8:15 p.m.
Maple Heights Public Library, 5225 Library Lane
Meeting Room (Room 3)
Maple Heights, Ohio 44137
Free!
*Share a favorite poem of Maya’s or one of your own.
* Please limit presentations to five minutes or less.
*Advance registration requested for all readers.
For registration or other information, please contact
Dr. Regennia N. Williams, at regennia@gmail.com.
Hosted by RASHAD and RMW Business Enterprises
About Dr. Regennia N. Williams, Founder, President, and Executive Director
Dr. Regennia N. Williams is the Founder and Executive Director of The RASHAD Center, Inc., a Maryland-based non-profit educational corporation.
Williams holds a PhD in Social History and Policy from Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, Ohio. A native Clevelander and a four-time alumna of Cleveland State University, information on RASHAD's “Praying Grounds, African American Faith Communities: A Documentary and Oral History” project is now available online at www.ClevelandMemory.org/pray/, a site that is maintained by CSU's Library Special Collections, home of the Praying Grounds manuscript collections. Praying Grounds was the primary inspiration for the launching of the Initiative for the Study of Religion and Spirituality in the History of Africa and the Diaspora (RASHAD) at CSU, and links to RASHAD's scholarly journal and newsletter are also available on the Praying Grounds site. On April 28, 2020, the RASHAD Center, Inc. became a tax-exempt 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization.
In 2010, Dr. Williams was a Visiting Fulbright Scholar at Nigeria’s Obafemi Awolowo University, where she taught history and directed a RASHAD-related oral history project that focused on the role of religion in recent Nigerian social history. Other research-related travels have taken her to Canada, China, France, South Africa, and Austria.
In 2013, she conceived and produced “Come Sunday @ 70: The Place of Duke Ellington’s Sacred Jazz in World History and Culture, c. 1943-2013,” a project that included scholarly presentations and performing arts activities. From September 1993 until May 2015, she was a faculty member in the Department of History at Cleveland State University. She served as a Fulbright Specialist at South Africa's University of the Free State in the summer of 2019, and completed a short-term faculty residency at Howard University in the fall of 2019. She is based in Cleveland, Ohio.
As a public scholar, her current research projects focus on African American history and culture, especially as it relates to music, religion, and spirituality. She is a member of the Oral History Association, the Western Reserve Historical Society, and the National Museum of African American History and Culture.
The RASHAD Center, Inc. 