DUANE
Duane's take
Here's how the official marker tells it, and I'm gonna do my best to do it justice. A small group of African American Tarrant County residents gathered in the summer of 1897, led by the Reverend Mr. Squires, and they did something that doesn't sound remarkable on the surface — they organized a church.
Mount Olive Baptist Church. Started on Indiana Street. Humble beginnings, as most enduring things tend to be.
Now, if you knew then what that little congregation would become, you'd have had a hard time believing it. But we're getting ahead of ourselves. That's the nature of a good story.
You have to let it build. In 1966, the city of Arlington was experiencing a period of growth, and Mount Olive moved into a new white brick sanctuary at 415 North West Street. At that moment, the church had sixteen members.
Sixteen. You could seat them all at a couple of long tables and still have room for the potato salad. But something was stirring.
The membership rolls began to increase. By 1976, when the church was formally incorporated, it had more than four hundred members. Four hundred.
That is not a rounding error — that is a congregation. And on October 31st of that same year, 1976, groundbreaking took place for a new church building. By June of 1978, the members were worshiping in that new facility.
The momentum did not slow. A steady increase in membership led to additional facilities being built to house the extended ministries and programs of the church. By 1986, membership totaled thirty-five hundred.
Thirty-five hundred souls. Then in 1989, Mount Olive moved again — this time to new facilities on Sanford Street. And by 1997, membership had grown to ten thousand people.
Ten thousand. From sixteen to ten thousand. The marker doesn't ask you to do the math.
It just lays the numbers out, one after another, and lets them do what numbers like that tend to do — take your breath away. Now, through all of that growth, Mount Olive never lost sight of something important. The church maintained an innovative and active outreach program in the community, alongside its long history of providing worship and educational programs for its members.
In 1997, the church was celebrating a century of service — a hundred years from that summer gathering led by Reverend Squires. And the marker says it plainly: the church continues to uphold the values and traditions of its founders. That right there is the whole story in one sentence.
A small group of people, one summer, one vision — and a hundred years later, ten thousand reasons they got it right.
What the marker says
A small group of African American Tarrant County residents, led by the Rev. Mr. Squires, organized Mount Olive Baptist Church in the summer of 1897. Originally located on Indiana Street, the church moved to a new white brick sanctuary at 415 N. West Street in 1966, when the city of Arlington experienced a period of growth. The church had sixteen members in 1966, but soon the membership rolls began to increase. By 1976, when the church was formally incorporated, it had more than 400 members. Groundbreaking for a new church building took place on October 31, 1976, and by June 1978 the members were worshiping in a new facility. A steady increase in membership led to the building of additional facilities to house the extended ministries and programs of the church. By 1986, membership totaled 3,500. The church moved to new facilities on Sanford Street in 1989, and membership grew to 10,000 by 1997. In addition to its long history of providing worship and educational programs for its members, Mount Olive Baptist Church has maintained an innovative and active outreach program in the community. Celebrating a century of service in 1997, the church continues to uphold the values and traditions of its founders. (1997)