Contributor: Los Angeles' Azusa Street Revival Remade Democracy Once. Its Lessons Apply Today

Contributor: Los Angeles' Azusa Street revival remade democracy once. Its lessons apply today

When African Americans migrated west, L.A. was wide open, a physical and spiritual landscape with space to build the social order anew.

The Dusty L.A. Stable Where Black Migrants Made Real Democracy

What if the key to understanding American democracy lies not in marble hallways but in a dusty Los Angeles horse stable, where a one-eyed Black preacher gathered people to pray? In the spring of 1906, William J. Seymour, the son of formerly enslaved parents, launched a revival on Azusa Street in downtown Los Angeles. That converted livery stable quickly became the birthplace of modern Pentecostalism and one of the most racially integrated religi…