Celebrate Juneteenth and Black Music Appreciation Month with Artists and Educators in Ohio

Posted on June 14, 2021 by Dr. Regennia N. Williams, Founder, President, and Executive Director

Pianist Daniel Spearman (above) will launch RASHAD’s 2021 Juneteenth celebration on Saturday, June 19, 2021, with a 12 PM Performance at the Cleveland History Center (CHC), 10825 East Boulevard, Cleveland, Ohio 44106. This event is free with paid CHC admission.

Juneteenth (Freedom Day) celebrates the promise of Black freedom in the United States of America. The holiday commemorates an important event in the history of the ongoing Black freedom struggle, when people in Texas learned that the era of legal slavery was coming to an end. On June 19, 1865, Major General Gordon Granger published General Orders No. 3, which informed the people of Texas that, “in accordance with a proclamation from the Executive of the United States, all slaves are free.”

The following events, part of an arts-filled Juneteenth / “Magnoliafest” / Black Music Month Celebration, are designed to recognize the significance of the Juneteenth celebration in Black history and to pay tribute to Dr. A. Grace Lee Mims, one of the founders of the Black History Archives Project (now the African American Archives Auxiliary of the Western Reserve Historical Society), host of WCLV’s “The Black Arts” radio program for more than 40 years, and a long-time faculty member at The Music Settlement (TMS) on Magnolia Drive in University Circle.  This RASHAD Center, Inc. program is supported in part by the residents of Cuyahoga County through a public grant from Cuyahoga Arts and Culture, the Music Settlement, and the Western Reserve Historical Society.

The Passione Quartet

(*Cleveland School of the Arts Students)

Darnell McMullen II (violin) Devin Chapman (violin)

Raymond Parker (viola)

Camari Dodson-Poindexter (cello)

The Music Settlement

11125 Magnolia Dr.

Cleveland, Ohio 44106

Saturday, June 19, 2021, 2-2:45 PM; Free Admission

 

Helen Turner-Thompson, Mark Thompson, and the Helen Turner-Thompson Gospel Music Ensemble

Crawford Auto-Aviation Museum, Rotunda

The Western Reserve Historical Society

10825 East Boulevard

Cleveland, Ohio 44106

Saturday, June 19, 2021, 3 – 3:45 PM; Free with Paid Museum Admission

African American Soul Dancing and Book Signing

Featuring Frank R. Ross, Best-Selling Author, and Friends

Crawford Auto-Aviation Museum, Rotunda

The Western Reserve Historical Society

10825 East Boulevard

Cleveland, Ohio 44106

Sunday, June 27, 2021, 12-2 PM; Free with Paid Museum Admission 

The Linking Legacies Project

A Virtual Performance by

            Christopher Jenkins (viola)

            Dianna White-Gould (piano)

            Matthew Jones (tenor) 

Sunday, June 27, 2021, 7 PM, Online Premiere, Free

For more information, please visit the Facebook event page for the RASHAD Center, Inc.’s C-L-E / Arts and Culture TV program at https://fb.me/e/MqINWjvc .

    *C-L-E / Arts and Culture TV is supported in part by the residents of

      Cuyahoga County through a public grant from Cuyahoga Arts &

     Culture.

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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.
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