It’s a New Season for RASHAD!

Posted on November 23, 2022 by Dr. Regennia N. Williams, Founder, President, and Executive Director

By Regennia N. Williams, PhD

Juneteenth 2022 signaled the start of a sun-drenched new season in an ongoing celebration of African American history and culture that included church histories, oral histories, a film festival, museum exhibits, and more. In a similar fashion, Greater Cleveland’s snowy 2022 Veterans Day weekend signaled the official end of my extended summer and the start of a fall-winter holiday season that promises to be as enlightening and exhilarating as the previous season.

Please know that you are cordially invited to review the following photographic memories from my post-Juneteenth through Veterans Day season. I look forward to sharing new posts related to activities that will begin during the 2022 Thanksgiving celebration and continue through Black History Month 2023. Thanks, always, for your interest in the history and cultures of Africa and the Diaspora.

The roof of Cleveland’s St. Adalbert / Our Lady of the Blessed Sacrament Church is shown here on a beautiful day in July 2022. The church is observing the centenary of its establishment from April 2022 through April 2023.

Pernel Jones Jr., President of the Cuyahoga County Council, and Regennia N. Williams are pictured at a September 2022 Assembly for the Arts breakfast for elected officials.

State School Board member Meryl Johnson (left) is shown here with Regennia N. Williams in September 2022. Both are members of Delta Sigma Theta Sorority, Inc.

Iris LeFleur ((left) was the guest lecturer for the Greater Cleveland Urban Film Festival’s 2022 “Black to the Future” / Afrofuturism closing night event in September.

(left to right) Virginia Dawson, Regennia N. Williams, and Carol Philips-Bey have agreed to join Jeanne Madison in co-authoring a scholarly article on “Forest City Hospital and the Medical Associates: Race, Place, and Community-Based Healthcare, c. 1957-1978” (working title). The three co-authors were photographed in Cleveland’s UnBar Cafe.

The Rev. Dr. John Humbert (left) and the Rev. Dr. Brian Cash are shown here after Dr. Humbert’s interview for “The Greenstone Church Oral History Project” at the East Mt. Zion Baptist Church in Cleveland, Ohio. Rev. Cash serves as East Mt. Zion’s pastor, and Regennia N. Williams is the oral historian for this project.

Regennia N. Williams (left) is shown above with Damian Goggans, one of the narrators for the Western Reserve Historical Society’s A. Grace Lee Mims Arts and Culture Oral History Project that Williams directs. Goggans, a guitarist, is an alumnus of the Cleveland School of the Arts and is completing his undergraduate studies a the Oberlin Conservatory of Music.

An exhibit featuring a hologram of the Rev. Dr. Otis Moss, Jr. (left) opened at the Maltz Museum’ in the fall of 2022. Rev. Moss, who served as one of the Civil Rights Era lieutenants for the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., is Pastor Emeritus of Cleveland Olivet Institutional Baptist Church, and he was one of the Maltz Museum’s founding board members.

Autumn leaves at Cleveland’s Western Reserve Historical Society.

Award-winning writer and educator Nikki Giovanni (left) delivered the Friday, November 11, 2022, keynote address at the conference for the Greater Cleveland Chapter of the National Congress of Black Women. Cuyahoga County Councilwoman Yvonne Conwell serves as the president of the Greater Cleveland group.

Nathaniel Williams, Sr. (1930-1978), a US Army veteran, was one of several service men and women honored during the 2022 Veterans Day Weekend activities.

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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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