Gospel Music Historical Society Board, Cleveland, Ohio, December 14, 2019.
In the midst of this Christmas season, I had the good fortune to receive a gift that didn’t require wrapping paper and a bow–and I know that this gift will keep on giving! Like my colleagues pictured here, my priceless gift came in the form of an invitation to serve as a charter board members for the Gospel Music Historical Society (GMHS). Needless to say, I am honored, humbled, and looking forward to working with and learning from this distinguished group of artists and community leaders.
Many people already know GMHS founder and president Frederick “Chuckie” Burton (second from right) as a gifted graphic designer, a renowned gospel musician, the author of Cleveland’s Gospel Music (Arcadia Publishing), and the host of the 2019 GMHS Black-Tie Awards Gala. The souvenir program booklet for that November 2nd event is a work of art–just like each of the songs that the traditional and contemporary gospel artists performed at the gala.
Already a collector’s item, I plan to add my copy of the booklet to the Praying Grounds Archive in Library Special Collections at Cleveland State University– so that it can be near the oral history interviews of Mr. William “Dub” Burton, the Reverend Dr. Earl Preston, Jr., Mrs. Odessa Still, Rev. Melvin L. Kenniebrew, and more than 100 other great church men and women.
Please join me in congratulating GMHS on its many successes to date, wishing this public charity all the best during the holiday season, and supporting its work in the future.
You can follow GMHS on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/Gospel-Music-Historical-Society-1828367987466324/
Regennia N. Williams, PhD
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. 