When I was informed of the passing of Rev. Helen Turner-Thompson (January 7, 1931 – March 5, 2024), I immediately thought of the times when she graciously agreed to share her oral history with me or other individuals who were working with me.
In 2004, I had the pleasure of interviewing Rev. Helen Turner-Thompson in her home for The HistoryMakers, one of the nation’s largest African American video oral history projects. The original interview is housed with others for this project in the Library of Congress. This screenshot is taken from The HistoryMakers website. For more information, including video excerpts from the interview, click HERE.
In the 2003 studio interview for the Praying Grounds Project at Cleveland State University, the 2004 HistoryMakers interview in her home, and the 2021 telephone interview with the members of the A. Grace Lee Mims Arts and Culture Oral History Project, she let everyone know that she had both contributed to the art of Black sacred music and been influenced by the contributions of other artists.
(Above) Rev. Helen Turner-Thompson and her vocal and instrumental ensemble posed with me for this Juneteenth 2021 photograph at the Western Reserve Historical Society. (Photograph courtesy of Regennia N. Williams.)
Hers was definitely a life well-lived and carefully documented, and numerous interviews, concert performances, church services, articles, book chapters, and books provide evidence of the value of her work. Those of us who knew her benefitted greatly from her contributions, and she will be missed. Thanks especially to the HistoryMakers, the Cleveland Memory Project, where the Praying Grounds Collection is housed, and the Gospel Music Historical Society, where she served on the governing board, students of African American history will continue to benefit from her rich legacy for years to come.
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. 