"For no art and no religion is possible until we make allowances, until we manage to keep quiet the enfant terrible of logic that plays havoc with the other faculties".--John Crowe Ransom
William J. Seymour, an African-American preacher, was born in the American south, and raised a Roman Catholic, the son of former slaves. As a young man, he lost an eye to smallpox. He took this as as sign that he was to become a minister, for though he had gotten training at a "holiness college" in Cincinatti, he had resisted the idea of ordination. He believed in faith healing, in personal holiness, and in supernatural "gifts" of the Holy Spirit.
In Houston, he met people who spoke in tongues. He never had spoken in tongues himself at that point, but he became convinced that glossolalia, as the practice is termed, is a sign of the Holy Spirit.
He moved to Los Angeles from Texas. He preached his belief in glossalia to his first church in Los Angeles, but came into his own after he and a group of believers rented an industrial space on 312 Azuza Street. On Easter Sunday 1906, the Azusa Street Revival began.
( a tale of pentecost, of racism, of occultists and of sweeping change )