Pastor Nathaniel Williams, Jr., pianist-composer and tenor vocalist.
On July 24, 2020, the RASHAD Center, Inc. had the pleasure of working with Pastor Nathaniel Williams, Jr., the Williams Family Singers, and videographer Alexander Garrett to capture footage for the pilot project for C-L-E / Arts and Culture TV, an Internet television educational program that will air beginning in 2021.
Garrett shot the video in the beautiful sanctuary of Cleveland’s St. Adalbert / Our Lady of the Blessed Sacrament Roman Catholic Church. Garrett’s company, Pano Marketing Solutions, Inc. handled the final editing, with input from the Williams Family Singers and RASHAD’s Theresa Ann Bumpers, who interviewed Pastor Williams as part of this project.
One example of the religious art at Cleveland’s St. Adalbert / Our Lady of the Blessed Sacrament Church.
The Williams Family Singers in concert on December 1, 2019. Pictured (left to right) are Lana, Lisa, Kimberly, Irma, Joshua, and Nathaniel.
The family began singing together as children at the New Joshua Missionary Baptist Church, where their singing parents, Lonzrine and Nathaniel Williams Sr., were two of the congregation’s founding members.
Pastor Nathaniel Williams Jr., a Cleveland State University alumnus, has worked as a professional musician for 47 years, and he continues to share his music and sermons online during the COVID-19 global pandemic. The family last performed in concert at his church, Christian Light, on December 1, 2019. Over the years, they have performed at numerous other churches and venues throughout Greater Cleveland, including the Drinko Recital Hall at Cleveland State University and Severance Hall, home of the Cleveland Orchestra. The above image of Pastor Williams and the images below of his sisters are stills from the July 24, 2020, St. Adalbert video.
Irma
Regennia
Lana
Lisa
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. 