​After 60 years, it’s time to take my father’s story out of the shad… Paul Spike needs your support for The Queer Preacher Was My Father - A
Reverend Robert Warren Spike was a foundational yet unsung white American civil rights leader and clergyman during the Hoover years. On 17th October, 1966, Reverend Robert Spike was found bludgeoned to death in a campus religious centre in Columbus, Ohio. His murder remains officially unsolved, though church colleagues and historians suspect a political assassination. A lack of fingerprints or other standard evidence at the crime scene led many to suspect a professional hit. Police heavily focused on Reverend Robert Spike’s personal life, using his sexuality to publicly defame him and his legacy and obfuscate the motives behind the crime. They promoted the narrative that his death was the result of a “sexual pickup gone bad”. They highlighted his bisexuality, bar lists, and magazines they labelled pornographic to discredit his civil rights legacy.
QX spoke to Paul Spike about the father he knew and his father’s legacy, the injustice a loving son is still fighting 60 years later, and how QX readers can help.
Reverend Robert Spike was a foundational yet often unsung white American civil rights leader and clergyman during the Hoover years.
Those in London may want to come to the Paul Spike Q&A at the Eagle, London (SE11) at 9 pm on Friday, 24 July, 2026, to be followed by a club night hosted by Handsome. Door is ÂŁ8 for this fundraising event, the first step toward the development of a documentary about Robert Spike.
(Posting this because Paul Spike is a personal friend and the footage I’ve seen is heavy stuff.)
