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Biography

Dot Steverson grew up in Third Baptist Church, was a member of the Teen Training Union and a Sunday school teacher. She joined with her family and left following a disagreement in the church. Cooperation and faith led to the establishment of Progresssive Baptist Church in 1966.

Transcript

Gabrielle: What is your name?

Dorothy Steverson: My name is Dorothy Steverson but most people call me Dot.

Gabrielle: Where were you born?

Dorothy: I was born in Davenport. I wasn’t born in a hospital; I was born in somebody’s home. At that time most people, most people my age were born at home instead of the hospital.

Gabrielle: What church did you attend?

Dorothy: I attended Third Baptist church, and I attended that until I was ten years old and I was baptized when I was ten years old and the minister who baptized me was Reverend Carl. He baptized me and he baptized my brother both at the same time.

Gabrielle: How long did you attend Third Baptist?

Dorothy: I attended Third Baptist until I got out of high school. Was out of high school, then finally, partly, I went to college. Then while I was there and I got to be older, I did teach Sunday School. And when I was a teenager they had what was it? BYPU? Baptist Training Union for Teenagers? I attended that. I also sang in the youth choir.

Gabrielle: Why did you leave?

Dorothy: Well, I stayed there until there was a disagreement between some people at Progressive. And I’m sorry, not at Progressive but at Third Baptist, there was a disagreement, and my family left at this time and some more people left at this time. So I was one of the people that left when they left and there was about a hundred people that left Third Baptist at this time.

Gabrielle: What facilities did you all use for services?

Dorothy: Well first of all when we left Third Baptist we did not have a church to go to so we had to organize ourselves. So we organized ourselves in the backyard of one of the deacons at that church. And during this time we elected, they elected officers. You know, church officers. And so, since we didn’t have anywhere to go we met at several other churches, you know, in the Quad Cities, you know, like St. John’s Methodist Church. And we would meet there on Sunday’s after they had their church service and then we would have ours. And we did that for quite some time. We had our first really main church service then in 1966 and that was on May 1966 and that was at the Nicholson’s Funeral Home. And during this time there were 45 people present and we did not have a minister. But we also had services, when we couldn’t meet at the funeral home we also held services at the Trinity Cathedral Church until the end of May. At that time a group of people who had left Third Baptist they were invited to worship at the Methodist Church that’s the one on the corner of Ripley and Eleventh Street? Yes, Eleventh Street. And at that time the minister there was Reverend Taylor. And he was kind enough to let us worship there until we could do something different. Thank you very much for this interview young lady, I appreciate it. I hope I told you all you need to know.