I just want to say thanks to everyone who supported the Oral History Association’s Zora Neale Hurston activities in Eatonville, Florida, Hurston’s childhood home. I really enjoyed my museum visit, the interview with museum founder N.Y. Nathiri, and the Educator’s Roundtable in the library’s meeting room– and I look forward to listening to the edited interview via the 90.7 FM WMFE website. (Visit http://www.wmfe.org/ and search for other Hurston / Eatonville stories now.)
Branch Manager Patrice Florence-Walker (left) welcomed Hurston lovers to the Eatonville library at Zora Neale Hurston Square. All program participants received copies of Hurston’s Mules and Men folklore collection.
Thanks, also, to Harper Perennial for donating 350 copies of Mules and Men for distribution at the Eatonville activities and the Oral History Association’s 49th Annual Meeting in Tampa. OHA’s Committee on Diversity invited all interested readers to join them in celebrating the 80th anniversary of the book’s publication, since most of the folktales in this volume were collected in Central Florida.
The Oral History Association’s Committee on Diversity hosted a reception at the Tampa Marriott Waterside (the conference hotel), on Friday, October 16th.
No matter how much I read, however, I always learn something new about Hurston when I discuss her life and work with others. Let’s talk more at Eatonville’s ZORA! Festival in January 2016–as we celebrate the 125th anniversary of Hurston’s birth! –Dr. Regennia N. Williams
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.
Thanks, also, to Harper Perennial for donating 350 copies of Mules and Men for distribution at the Eatonville activities and the Oral History Association’s 49th Annual Meeting in Tampa. OHA’s Committee on Diversity invited all interested readers to join them in celebrating the 80th anniversary of the book’s publication, since most of the folktales in this volume were collected in Central Florida.
The RASHAD Center, Inc. 