When the United States entered World War I, the country braced for impact. But Black Americans who still worked on the fields in the South saw an open door. With the country’s white men off to fight in the war, the non-agricultural industries of the North were desperate for workers. Once again, Bl ack labor helped move the country forward.More than 50 years after the Emancipation Proclamation, with their freedom in hand, Black migrants flocked to cities in the North to seek financial opportunities and escape the relentless grip of Jim Crow.Heeding the clarion call from the Chicago Defender, the African American newspaper that painted a picture of prosperity up North, tens of thousands of Black migrants came to Chicago during the first wave of the Great Migration. Eric White / Sun-Times Olivet Baptist Church, known for its active role in the community, had social workers meet Black migrants at the 12th Street platform to help them settle into their new environment.This was just one of the ways that Olivet met Black people’s needs for survival — feeding both the spiritual and material. As Olivet continued to prioritize the community, it grew to be one of the largest churches of its kind. Now, over a century later, and with just 100 active members, Olivet is seeking to reclaim its role as a community-minded institution.Faith rooted in action Olivet Baptist Church, founded in 1850, is Chicago’s second-oldest Black church, after Quinn Chapel AME. During the abolition movement, Olivet helped enslaved people inch closer to freedom via the Underground Railroad.Located at 3101 S. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Drive in Bronzeville, an area once known as the Black Belt. In the early 20th Century, most Black people couldn’t move beyond this area. Because Black people were restricted, Olivet became a community anchor for the residents.When Lacy Kirk Williams became pastor in 1916, he ushered the church to look beyond its limestone walls and stained-glass windows. The church started to think about community-minded ministry.“You have our people coming from the South, in huge numbers, and they're coming to the North for the first time,” said John L. Smith, Olivet’s current pastor. “What can the church do to help integrate them into this new existence that they're facing?”Olivet evolved into a quasi-social services organization. When Black migrants arrived, the church directed them towards housing, offered daycare and created the city’s first kindergarten program, Smith said. Congregants of Olivet Baptist Church in 1918.Chicago History Museum Wallace Best, a Princeton University professor of religion and African American studies, said Olivet became a national model for how churches could bridge the gap and help Black migrants settle in the North and support their needs beyond the spiritual.“One of the things that Chicago did so well was set the tone for what was the work of the church,” Best said. “The church is a place of action. It is a place of work, not just a place of worship. It was a place that was geared to the material needs of Black people.” Members of Olivet Baptist Church circa 1925Chicago History Museum As people came to Olivet, they also became members of the church. At its height, Olivet had more than 10,000 members and touted itself as the largest Protestant church in the world at that time, Smith said. That growth “was a direct connection to the social services and the hub that the church created for migrants who were coming from the South.”Other churches didn't fare as well. Best attributes that to whether they could support people’s needs. “Churches lived or died whether to the extent that they were actually responding to this great demographic shift,” Best said.For the next 40 years and through the second wave of the Great Migration, the church continued to attract and capture the hearts and souls of Black migrants who looked to Chicago for better.Four generationsComing from a small church in Vicksburg, Mississippi, Irene Napier couldn’t believe her eyes when she first stepped into Olivet in 1952.“Just coming into all of it and seeing the mass of humanity.,I'll never forget that,” said Napier, 93, who's been a member of Olivet for 73 years. Longtime member Irene Napier in Olivet Baptist Church after Palm Sunday serviceCandace Dane Chambers / Sun-Times Napier visited the city a few times before deciding to settle in Chicago. As she prepared to make her move, Napier recalled what she’d been told by members of her home church, Pleasant Green Baptist Church. As a young woman, they taught her that finding her a church home should be her first priority.For her, becoming a member of Olivet was all but written. She previously visited her older sister Tilly, who was boarding at the home of the Evans family, who were members of Olivet. The sisters also had two aunts who were Olivet members.Like the Black migrants who came in the 1910s, Napier said, “I was looking for opportunity, and I wanted to continue school.”She enrolled in a Chicago public school nursing-aide program,y became a nurse and got a job at Mercy Hospital. When she joined her aunts at Olivet, she was asked to serve in the church.“The usher board came, and they wanted to recruit me,” said Napier, who’s been serving ever since. Today, she can be seen helping around the church, like passing out leaves during Palm Sunday.For Napier, Olivet is the place that she and four generations of her family have called home. From left: Candice Robinson and son, Zayden Robinson, Delanor Grimes, Irene Napier and Nyla Chandler take a family photo after Palm Sunday service at Olivet Baptist Church on the South Side.Candace Dane Chambers/Sun-Times “And, down through the years, I have been very committed to serving here at Olivet,” she said. “I got married here. My two children, a boy and a girl, were raised and baptized here.”She’s never had a reason to leave even as the church’s membership began to decline.‘Silk-stocking’ faith, urban renewalAs the country was thrust into the Civil Rights Movement, Olivet’s pastor — the Rev. Dr. J.H. Jackson — was also the president of the National Baptist Association, a national convener of Black Baptist churches. Jackson’s role put Olivet in the national spotlight among the Black Baptist community. As the church’s reputation grew, its attention no longer was hyperfocused on the community, according to Smith.“What ends up happening is we begin to celebrate that instead of staying grounded and connected to community-minded ministry, which grew the church at the beginning of the 20th century,” the pastor said. “It became firmly entrenched, [in] that silk-stocking church because it appealed to a different demographic at that time.”Rev. Marshall Hatch, senior pastor at New Mount Pilgrim Missionary Baptist Church in West Garfield Park, said silk-stocking churches mimicked “white culture, white respectability culture,” making a class distinction within the Black community, and Jackson’s politics appealed to them.Jackson abided by the conservative principle of pulling yourself up by your bootstraps. Like the famed Black scholar Booker T. Washington, Jackson believed that it was the individual’s responsibility to improve their life, not the government’s.His perspective opposed the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.’s approach to racial equity, and the overall sentiment that the country owed Black people the rights endowed to every American citizen.“Dr. Jackson had a different political philosophy and approach to what he believed would lead to the liberation of Black people,” Smith said. Rev. Dr. J.H. Jackson in 1960Sun-Times file Their approaches were different, but Jackson and King were heading in the same direction, Smith said: “The goal was: ‘What would be the best role to help Black people achieve their civil rights in this society?’ ”As Jackson professed these ideals from the pulpit, his membership dwindled. His congregants flocked to churches whose leadership had a more radical approach to improving the lives of Black people.Smith also attributes the church’s decline to urban renewal. Churches like Olivet grew largely because members could walk to church. As housing segregation was deemed unconstitutional, more affluent middle-class Black members left. Those who were left were the low-income families who clung to affordable housing. But, with the Illinois Institute of Technology's expansion and the development of Prairie Shores and Lake Meadows, Smith said affordable housing in the area became scarce.“One of the often-neglected aspects of why our churches have declined is because of social policy and how housing development influences what goes on around churches,” Smith said. “And so that community that was forced into the Black Belt, impoverished. That community is actually being pushed out and pushed from being around the church.”As the plans were underway, Smith said that Olivet negotiated with the city and developers of the new complexes to offer existing residents an opportunity to live in the new homes. “The former residents, who were predominantly all Black, had first rights of refusal,” Smith said. “But nobody who was in the community before could afford to live in them because it was built to be workforce housing, not affordable housing.”As a result, people left.Today, Olivet has 100 consistent members, Smith said, far fewer than the thousands who once called the church home. The sanctuary at Olivet Baptist ChurchProvided Keeping Bronzeville bronzeSmith has a vision for Olivet Baptist Church to boldly serve the community once more. Trinity Square is a planned $157-million development that would include 366 units of affordable housing, a daycare center, food pantry, workforce development incubator and a clinic. It would be located on the corner plot the church owns. The project is in the predevelopment phase and seeking seed funding to break ground. Pastor John L. Smith inside the sanctuary of Olivet Baptist Church.Tyler Pasciak LaRiviere / Sun-Times Smith said that most historically Black churches are now commuter churches, where members moved away from the church’s surrounding area. Napier, Olivet’s longtime member, moved to the south suburbs and commutes once a week for services.“One of the goals of Trinity Square is to create affordable housing in our community that will allow the historic community stakeholders to at least have an option to stay, and keep Bronzeville bronze,” Smith said.Today, Bronzeville is ripe with opportunity and interest from developers seeking to rebuild the area. As in its heyday, Smith said, Olivet is embracing its community-minded ministry and making decisions based on the needs of the community. And the church is using the land it owns to do that. An artist’s rendering of the proposed Trinity Square.Olivet Baptist Church “What can we do to leverage [the land] to be of benefit to those historical stakeholders who have been here and should be able to benefit from all of the economic development and the real estate boom that's coming to this area,” Smith said.Napier said she believes in Smith’s vision and wonders, unlike Moses from the Bible who never got the chance to see the promised land, whether she’ll be able to see it come to fruition. “And if I'm given grace to see it and be a part of it, it’s going to come to pass.” CHICAGO’S BLACK CHURCHES“Faith in Action” is an occasional series, from WBEZ and the Sun-Times, on the history and impact of the Black Church in Chicago. In addition to Olivet Baptist Church, the series will feature the history and work of several Black churches, including:When freedom was fragile: How Quinn Chapel AME put its faith in actionFellowship Missionary Baptist ChurchLawndale Christian Community ChurchProgressive Baptist Church ...read more read less