St. Adalbert / Our Lady of the Blessed Sacrament Roman Catholic Church in Cleveland, Ohio. (Photo courtesy of Regennia N. Williams.)
By Regennia N. Williams, PhD
On April 24, 2022, “Divine Mercy Sunday,” members of St. Adalbert / Our Lady of the Blessed Sacrament Roman Catholic Church officially launched the celebration of its 100th anniversary. A century earlier, in response to action on the part of a group of African American petitioners, Bishop Joseph Schrembs of the Diocese of Cleveland formally declared “the establishment of a parish for the Colored Catholics of Cleveland” during an April 11, 1922, meeting. That parish was Our Lady of the Blessed Sacrament, and the parish continues to serve congregants and residents of the city’s Fairfax community. Some photographs from the centenary celebration’s kick-off are included below. For more information on the parish’s rich history, I invite you to visit the website for the Diocese of Cleveland HERE.
Dr. Regennia N. Williams and The Most Reverend Bishop Edward Malesic on Sunday, April 24, 2022, following the anniversary service at St. Adalbert / Our Lady of the Blessed Sacrament Church. (Photo Courtesy of Regennia N. Williams)Sr. Juanita Shealey, CSJ, long-time member of St. Adalbert / Our Lady of the Blessed Sacrament, is shown here at the anniversary celebration on Sunday, April 24, 2022. (Photo courtesy of Regennia N. Williams.)
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. 