[1] During his tenure there neighborhood kids played basketball in the church's ramshackle gym and an interracial, international residence for students was established.
Spike also helped to create an art gallery where artists such as Claes Oldenburg, Allen Kaprow and Jim Dine could exhibit their, then unconventional, work.
In 1963 he was appointed the executive director of the National Council of Churches’ Commission on Religion and Race, which became an important arm of the Civil Rights Movement.
Less than a year after assuming his post in Chicago, Spike was bludgeoned to death at Ohio State University in Columbus on October 17, 1966.
Spike's death, Martin Luther King Jr. was quoted as stating, "He was one of those rare individuals who sought at every point to make religion relevant to the social issues of our time.