The One-Eyed Preacher on Azusa Street

In April 1906, a one-eyed Black preacher named William Joseph Seymour stood in a converted stable on Azusa Street in Los Angeles and watched the impossible unfold. Seymour, the son of formerly enslaved parents from Louisiana, had been barred from sitting in the classroom of the very Bible school where he learned about the baptism of the Holy Spirit. He had to listen through a doorway, seated in the hall, because of the color of his skin.…