The other historic congregations · Pilgrim, Mount Olive and Union, True Love

1905 – TODAY

The Baptist line: Fort Wayne's second historic Black congregation organized as Mount Olive Baptist Church in 1905. In 1925 a disagreement between the pastor and members divided it, and the Rev. Jordan started a second church named Greater Mount Olive Baptist Church; in 1946 the two merged to become Union Baptist Church, which worships at 2200 Smith Street and keeps records reaching back to about 1914. A Mount Olive Baptist pulpit was the city's Black civic stage in the spring of 1940, when Dr. Mary McLeod Bethune — director of minority affairs for the National Youth Administration and the highest-ranking African American in the Roosevelt administration — addressed a mass meeting there in April 1940, in Fort Wayne on the invitation of Ultra Art, described in the press of the day as the city's oldest Black women's club.

Pilgrim Baptist Church organized on 2 March 1919 in the home of Charlie Collins, by the Rev. Frank L. Brown, his wife Claracy Brown, Will Dixie, Henry Jefferson, Aaron Kelso Sr., Catherine Long, Lucille Simmons, Carrie and Jessie Weisinger, Minnie Williams, the Rev. McAlwayne and the Rev. Chambers. Brown, elected first pastor, had been holding Sunday Bible classes for the neighborhood's children in his home. The congregation's first building, from 1919 to 1923, was a former Irmscher Construction Company tool shed turned ice house; in 1923 it moved to the American Legion hall at 1800 South Hanna Street, and in 1929 into the old Phyllis Wheatley Social Center building on East Wallace Street — the churches and the center literally housing one another. The Rev. John Dixie Jr., elected fourth pastor in August 1931, served forty-three consecutive years, until his death on 27 December 1974; under him the church incorporated (1937), built at Eliza and Gay streets, and in 1951 completed a $60,000 building, worshipping meanwhile in the upstairs auditorium of the Elks Lodge hall in the 1300 block of Lafayette Street. The Rev. Sam Shade Jr., elected 12 January 1975, led the building of the present edifice — groundbreaking 31 March 1985, a $3,257,333.55 construction, completed 1987, when more than 900 families were members — and the burning of its mortgage on 7 March 1999, the church's eightieth anniversary. The Rev. Raymond C. Dix Jr. became sixth pastor in September 2017; the Indiana House of Representatives marked the congregation's centennial by resolution in 2019.

The church as civic infrastructure: The pattern runs through the whole record. The churches were the community's halls before it had any: Pilgrim worshipped in a Legion hall and the Wheatley Center; the Wheatley Center's own programs ran in church space. In September 1969 the churches became its schools — the Freedom Schools of the boycott met in six Black churches, led by the Rev. Jesse White of True Love Baptist Church and fifteen Black ministers (the boycott is told below and in the Schools section). The community has kept its own church history: in 2003 the African/African-American Historical Society commissioned and produced We've Come This Far by Faith, a video chronicle of Fort Wayne's Black churches from 1849 to 2000.

Sources:

1. ACGSI, "Wayne Township Churches of Allen County, Indiana" — Union Baptist Church: organized 1905 as Mount Olive Baptist Church; the 1925 division and the Rev. Jordan's Greater Mount Olive; the 1946 merger; 2200 Smith Street; records from about 1914.
2. Pilgrim Baptist Church, "Our History" (pilgrimbcfw.org) — the 2 March 1919 organization and charter members; the buildings and pastors; the 1985–87 edifice and its cost; the 1999 mortgage burning; read with Indiana House Resolution HR 0036 (2019), congratulating the church on its 100th anniversary, which confirms the organization, the first pastor and the ice-house years.
3. Peggy Seigel, "Pushing the Color Line," IMH 104 (September 2008), n. 6 — Mary McLeod Bethune at Mt. Olive Baptist Church, April 1940, on the invitation of Ultra Art, from the Indianapolis Recorder, 30 March and 6 April 1940, and the Journal Gazette, 2 February 1989.
4. The Schools section of this history — the September 1969 Freedom Schools in six Black churches under the Rev. Jesse White of True Love Baptist Church.
5. ACGSI, "African-Americans of Allen County, Indiana" — We've Come This Far by Faith (2003), the Historical Society's video history of Black churches, 1849–2000.