On Sunday, August 29, 2021, Cleveland’s One World Day celebration offered guests lots of opportunities to mingle with friendly people, enjoy great food and beverages, and shop for clothing, jewelry, and other items from the many vendors on hand. For those who, like me, joined the celebration late in the afternoon, the abundant sunshine and blue skies, made me forget about the rain that gave my hometown a good soaking earlier in the day. I suspect that most people associated with the Cleveland Cultural Gardens Federation, hosts for the event since 1946, would express similar sentiments about their 75th annual event.
My Official AAACG Water Bottle
Carl and Lavita Ewing and the members and friends of the Association of African American Cultural Gardens (AAACG) outdid themselves again. I have come to expect great things from them, but this want my first One World Day as an AAACG member. I am always inspired by their willingness to take on new challenges. There is, therefore, no doubt in my mind that they will continue to attract new members, offer great programs, and raise the funds to complete the phases two and three of the garden.
For more information about how you can support the work of the Association of African American Cultural Gardens, please visit http://aaacg.org/.
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. 