Welcoming a New Season!

Posted on October 7, 2023 by Dr. Regennia N. Williams, Founder, President, and Executive Director

Dear Readers,

Happy National Arts and Humanities Month! I trust that fall 2023 is off to an amazingly brisk and colorful start!

I shared my last blog post just before the official start of spring, and I am grateful for another online opportunity to share some of the photographic memories that I have been gathering since then. Just looking at the above photo from a late July 2023 visit to Fisk University in Nashville, Tennessee, for example, still makes me smile–and sing some of the sacred songs that the Fisk Jubilee Singers helped make famous in the 19th century.

In this new season of life, it is my sincere hope that you will find many picture perfect things to smile and sing about that relate to the study of African American history and culture.

Dr. Regennia N. Williams

Students from the Cleveland Institute of Music and Case Western Reserve University perform during an April 2023 Jazz Appreciation Month concert.

I really enjoyed tenor Steven Weems’ May performance at the Cleveland History Center.

I was so glad to see Stephanie Phelps and other community members at the Cleveland History Days celebration in June.

Dr. Portia Maultsby is still the reigning queen of African American Music History, and I am glad that she and other great scholars were in Nashville during the Association of African American Museums’ annual conference.

I am always filled with pride and inspired by the stories of sacrifice and courage associated with the life and legacy of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. (Memphis, TN)

Dear Cleveland and Vel Scott, You Rock!

Cleveland’s historic Antioch Baptist Church in celebrating its 130th anniversary in 2023, and I joined organist DeSean Lawson and vocalist and director Leesa Jackson at one of our celebratory events in August

This was an interesting and thought provoking exhibition at the Toledo Museum of Art.

Frederick Burton, author of Cleveland’s Gospel Music, at a Pre-Juneteenth / Black Music Month event at the Rock Hall.

Pianist and vocalist Mother Helen Turner Thompson participated in a gospel music history event last June at the Rock Hall.

I visited the Akron Museum of Art for the first time this summer, and I really had a great time.

This is Felice Hairston (and Fred Burton, in the background) at the Gospel Music Historical Society’s August 2023 “All White Affair.”

Just when you think no one is watching, an anonymous photographer snaps your picture at the Cleveland Museum of Art.

(left to right) Sr. Vicky, Mrs. Phillis Fuller Clipps, and Sr. Rita after Mass at the St. Adalbert / Our Lady of the Blessed Sacrament Church in Cleveland, Ohio.

Movie Night!

A planning session with Dr. Doretha Williams (left, National Museum of African American History and Culture), Kwanza Brewer (educator and leader in the Greater Cleveland Association of Black Storytellers) –and gourmet popcorn.

Memories of my new favorite meeting space . . . ThirdSpace Reading Room in Cleveland!

The National Museum of African American Museum (left)! Much more about this great institution later. #NMAAHC

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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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