Second Baptist Church was founded in 1882 by the departure of black members of First Baptist Church (now Lake Street Church).  In 1991, the two congregations passed a unanimous vote of reconciliation, and in 2018, made a formal commitment to work together as sister churches to destroy racism in our town. Currently a joint committee explores how the two churches can collaborate in the areas of worship, music, ministry, adult and youth programming as well as racial cooperation and justice.

On January 23, 2022, Lake Street Church adopted a Reparations Resolution, stepping forward with other faith communities to support the City of Evanston Reparations Program. This program acknowledges the harm caused to African-American/Black Evanston residents due to discriminatory housing policies and practices and inaction on the part of the City from 1919-1969. Funds can be awarded to support home ownership, home improvement, and mortgage assistance.

• 2022 - White Fragility: Why It's So Hard for White People to Talk About Racism

• 2023 - Nice Racism: How Progressive White People Perpetuate Racial Harm

• 2020-21 – America’s Long Struggle against Slavery (Great Courses: 30 episodes)

• ​2021 – Reconstruction: America After the Civil War (PBS series: 8 episodes)

• 2021 – Reparations in Evanston (Faith, Justice, and Reparations workshop: 3 episodes)

• 2021 – Eyes on the Prize: America's Civil Rights Years 1954–1965 (PBS series: 6 episodes)

• 2021 – The Blinding of Isaac Woodard (PBS series: 4 episodes.  The story of how the brutal blinding of returning black soldier Isaac Woodard lead to the racial awakening of President Harry Truman and eventually to the 1954 foundational civil-rights case Brown vs. Board of Education.)

• 2021-22 – Native Peoples of North America (Great Courses: 24 episodes)

• 2022 – The Black Church: This Is Our Story, This Is Our Song (PBS series: 8 episodes)

• 2022 - Jubilee Singers: Sacrifice and Glory (PBS series: 2 episodes. The Jubilee Singers were and are a black vocal performance group who began during Reconstruction.)

• Second Baptist Church Interfaith Racial Coalition

• ​Interfaith Action Evanston (IAE) Racial Justice and Equity Subcommittee (2020 - )

• Reparations National Symposium in Evanston (2021 - )

• Memberships in NAACP Evanston/Northshore (2022 -  )

• Leadership support of the Second Baptist Church Men’s Retreat (2024 -  )​

The Rev. Michael Woolf has helped address racial justice and white supremacy in the Alliance of Baptists, the American Baptist Churches USA, and the broader religious community.  His publications include the following.

• Repairing the redlined body of Christ. The Christian Century, March 2024.
  In 1882, the Black members of First Baptist Church in Evanston, Illinois, left to form Second Baptist Church. There they found safe harbor from the White supremacy that had relegated them to my church’s balcony and asked them to contribute to the construction of buildings that were built by them but never for them.

• White congregations can't do justice without following black leaders.  Sojourners, June 2023.
  The pastors of many Black churches in our town have led the push for reparations — with Evanston being the first municipality in the nation to offer reparations to its Black citizens.

• Preserving Black Panther party history is a spiritual concern. The Christian Citizen, February 2023.
  For me, a white pastor in a suburb bordering Chicago, preserving Black Panther Party sites is not only preserving Black history; it is also preserving a time when some churches answered the call that came from outside of their church doors and engaged with the real work that needs to be done in communities.

• Sanctuary and Subjectivity: Thinking Theologically about Whiteness and Sanctuary Movements.  Bloomsbury Press, September 2023.
  The Sanctuary Movement of the 1980s was a movement led by white religious liberals that housed Central Americans fleeing dictatorships supported by the United States government, giving them a platform to speak about the situation in their countries of origin. This book focuses on the movement's whiteness by centering the voices of recipients of sanctuary and taking their critiques seriously.