"William Joseph Seymour"(May 2, 1870-September 28,1922.)

Was an African American minister,and an initiator of the Pentecostal religious movement.He was born the son of slaves in Centerville Louisiana.As a grown man he became a student at a newly formed bible school founded by Charles Parham in Houston Texas in 1905.It was here that he learned the major tenets of the Holiness Movement.He developed a belief in glossolalia ('speaking in tongues) as a confirmation of the Holy Spirit.He later moved to Los Angeles to minister in churches.As a consequences of his new found Pentecostal doctrine he was removed from the parish where he had been appointed.Looking for a place to continue his work,he found a run-down building in downtown Los Angeles located on Azusa Street,and preached his doctrinal beliefs there.The result was the Azusa Street Revival.William not only rejected the existing racial barriers in favor of "unity in Chris," he also rejected the then almost-Universal barriers to women in any form of church leadership.This revival meeting extended from 1906 until 1909,and became widely known as "Pentecostalism,"likening it to the manifestations of the Holy Spirit recorded as occurring in the first two chapters of acts as occurring from the day of the feast of Pentecost onwards.It is believed,Charles Harrison Mason,founder of the  Church of God in Christ,received the Holy Spirit at the revival.Most of the current charismatic groups can claim some lieage linking them to the Azusa Street Revival and Rev. Seymour.While the movement was largely to fracture along racial lines within a decade,the splits were in some ways perhaps less deep than the vast divide that seems often to separate many white religious denominations from their counterparts.Probably the deepest spilt in the Pentecostal movement today is not racial,but rather between Trinitarian and oneness theologies.While there had been similar relgious movements in the past (the Cane Ridge,Kentucky religious movement a century before in the Second Great Awakening being one such example),the current world wide Pentecostal and charismmatic movements are generally agreed to have been in part outgrowths of Rev Seymour ministry and the Azusa Street Reviival.Rev.Seymour died of a heat yet, more tan 2 million people were part of the revival after his death.