Beams of heaven as I go Through this wilderness below Guide my feet in peaceful ways Turn my midnights into days.
—Charles Albert Tindley
This week, I returned to Cleveland, Ohio to celebrate the life and legacy of the Rev. Dr. Walter “Bud” Humphrey, the long-time pastor and former choir director at our family church, the New Joshua Missionary Baptist Church.
Although I was saddened by the news of his passing, I must also admit that I was overjoyed to join my four sisters, my brother, and dozens of other members of our extended Christian family in singing at a Friday, April 6, 2018 musical tribute to Pastor Humphrey.
That musical and the other events of this weekend reminded me of everything that I love most about the Black Church, including the power of place, the sense of community, and the message in the music.
Next Week, I plan to head home to Maryland’s Montgomery College, where I will have the honor of teaching “Listen Up! From Gospel to Liturgical Jazz,” a new class that I designed. Needless to say, I am grateful for another opportunity to teach and to learn, and some of the lessons that I learned in Cleveland have earned a place on the course syllabus!
I will always be indebted to Charles A. Tindley–composer of “Beams of Heaven” –one of Pastor Humphrey’s favorite songs, Duke Ellington, Thomas Andrew Dorsey, James Cleveland, Shirley Caesar, Aretha Franklin, Lonzrine and Nathaniel Williams, Sr. (my parents), Portia Maultsby, A. Grace Lee Mims, and, of course, Walter “Bud” Humphrey. They are among the people who taught me to love music and helped me to find my own voice as an educator and a writer, and I really appreciate it.
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.
Beams of heaven as I go Through this wilderness below Guide my feet in peaceful ways Turn my midnights into days. 
The RASHAD Center, Inc. 