William J. Seymour

William Joseph Seymour was a minister and the prominent leader of the Azusa Street Revival, which many contribute to the birth of the Pentecostal movement. In 1972, Sidney Ahlstrom, a church historian of Yale University, stated that Seymour was “the most influential black leader in American religious history.” He was born in Centerville, Louisiana in 1870 and moved to Los Angeles in 1906, where he lived and preached until his passing in 1922.

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