The One-Eyed Preacher of Azusa Street

In April 1906, William J. Seymour — a one-eyed son of formerly enslaved parents from Centerville, Louisiana — stood in a converted stable on Azusa Street in Los Angeles and began to preach. He had been barred from sitting with white students at Charles Parham's Bible school in Houston, forced to listen through a half-open door. Yet Seymour carried a conviction that God's Spirit recognized no such barriers.…