O.C.’s 1st Black Church Is Still Reaching Out

Connie Jones remembers when she and her friends would skip out between Sunday school and church service to buy candy with their saved nickels at the corner store. She would spend all day at Sunday school, in worship service or doing whatever activities the Second Baptist Church of Santa Ana had scheduled.

That was in the 1960s, when Santa Ana was the hub of Orange County’s black community, when the church served as a refuge and a place of hope.

Second Baptist started in 1923 with 12 members on West 8th Street, now Civic Center Drive. Some called the area Little Texas, referring to the black families who moved West or who came to work on military bases in Tustin and El Toro.

As the county’s oldest African American church, Second Baptist was built to fulfill the community’s needs. It also has a place in history: A few of the students who integrated the all-white Willard Intermediate School and Santa Ana High School were church members.

“That’s how important it is,” the pastor, the Rev. John McReynolds, said.

More than 80 years later, the church is still relevant to the community, but that community is scattered. Members now come from Los Angeles and Riverside counties and from South County.

And rather than cool themselves with fans, they sit on cushioned pews in the air-conditioned sanctuary on Westminster Avenue to listen to their pastor.

“In 1923, when Second Baptist Church was founded, there was not a place where black people could be baptized,” said McReynolds, the church’s pastor for 20 years.

“You’re talking about the heart of Jim Crow,” he said. “A lot of the racial, economic, cultural and social issues were very profound.

“The matter is not over because I live next to you, or because you have a seven-figure income. There’s one thing that cannot be hidden, and that is the matter of your skin color. Blackness speaks and it speaks in terms of the food we eat, the music we listen to, the way we weep and the way we hurt,” he said.

But: “It’s not only black, it’s human.”

McReynolds’ congregation has grown from several hundred to about 1,800 because, fans say, of his dynamism and his outstretched arms that welcome everybody.

Still, Second Baptist isn’t close to being among the largest or most popular predominantly black churches in the region. Churches in Los Angeles and Yorba Linda boast of membership in the tens of thousands.

But McReynolds isn’t trying to compete with other churches. His concern is giving members and first-time attendees a healthy worship experience.

“We’re not like Sam’s Grocery Store, who wants more people to sign up for their money,” he said. A large constituency has remained over the years, he said, because “African American people are loyal to their family.”

Jones, 51, was practically born in the church.

“It was a family. Everybody knew each other and trusted each other,” the Santa Ana resident said.

When Jones was born, the church had relocated to 2nd and Baker streets. From memory, Jones describes where everything was in the old sanctuary: the stained glass window on the east side of the square building, two windows on the south side, four steps up to the pulpit, and an organ and a piano in the front.

Dottie Mulkey called it a “little country church” that had about 50 members. Her father-in-law was a deacon there, so when Mulkey and her husband moved to Santa Ana in 1962, Second Baptist became their church.

There were fans perched on tables to help the parishioners survive the summer heat when everybody was dressed in suits and hats and gloves, stockings or socks. (Some parishioners still abide by the dress code.)

Carrying a stick along with her, Mrs. Whitten, the then-preacher’s wife, enforced the well-known rule that girls could not attend Sunday school barefoot -- they had to wear socks or stockings with shoes, even in the middle of summer.

“Oh, I had socks on,” Jones said. “Tiny little lady, but she was forceful with her voice.”

And everyone was somehow involved in the church, singing in the choir or working as an usher.

The sanctuary on Westminster -- where the church moved in December 2002 -- holds about 800 people, with curved pews sloping toward the large pulpit. McReynolds’ booming and melodic voice barely needs a microphone. Two video screens over the chapel and pulpit enlarge the choir, band and the ministers for the hundreds of parishioners to see.

Even as the congregation has grown tremendously since Jones and Mulkey began attending, the church still makes people feel as if they’re members of a small congregation.

“You can get lost in a large church,” one woman said. “That’s not what we have.”