HERE BY ASSIGNMENT by Charles Taylor

This biography highlights the remarkable life of Reverend Archie Ivy who is the senior pastor at New Hope Missionary Baptist Church in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. He has been pastor there for 25 years and has made New Hope an integral part of Milwaukee's central city. His church ministry has made a significant difference in the city including housing a charter school, offering a food bank and working for economic justice for the poor. He says "the church must instill hope in people and help them discover a better way of life." He was born in Shannon Mississippi at home, on August 17, 1942. He came of age in the Deep South during a time of Klansmen; Colored and White signs in public spaces and with Blacks sitting in the back of the bus. He grew up dirt-poor-the oldest of Mose and Ruby Ivy's ten children. Archie can remember moving from shack to shack over a dozen times by mule and wagon before he was a teenager. His father was a sharecropper during those transient years and had to go wherever he could find work. Although Shannon was a small rural town with less than 600 people it was still segregated. Archie attended the Shannon Colored School which housed all of the town's Blacks in one building-grades K-12. Church life was the culture center for Blacks in Shannon. "Church was all that we had as a people," says Archie. Archie gave his life to Christ at the age of 9 years old. His grandmother, 'Big Mama Ollie', who Archie says, "loved the lord" taught him about the bible and started him on his spiritual journey. "This is the path that God has chosen for me. I'm here by assignment," says Archie.