Los Angeles’ Azusa Street revival remade democracy once. Its lessons apply today
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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 became the birthplace of modern Pentecostalism and one of the most racially integrated religious gatherings in American history. Seymour preached a message on divine healing and sanctification to a crowd of Black, white, Asian and Latino worshippers that defied the logic of segregation. As parishioners fell to their knees in prayer, speaking in tongues, something profound happened: They practiced a kind of democracy that few had ever seen.
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The story of Azusa is just one episode in a much larger, and often overlooked, chapter in American history. Most Americans assume the Constitution will protect our rights and secure our freedoms. But for some, the system has never lived up to its promise. During the early 20th century, thousands of African Americans fled the racial segregation and violence of the Jim Crow South and migrated northward and westward, bringing with them a moral vision shaped by the Black freedom struggle and a belief that although American democracy had failed them, it could be made real. As we face a renewed crisis of democracy today, the new communities they built — which modeled belonging and critiqued exclusion — offer a lesson.
This democratic vision was not born in California — it was forged in the crucible of slavery, the broken promises of Reconstruction, and the racialized violence of Jim Crow. And yet, in the face of brutality, many did not fret or cower — they moved.
Many understood the Great Migration as a sacred journey, with the biblical story of Exodus as a central narrative. Black Southerners saw themselves as a people delivered from bondage and tasked with building a promised land. They did not wait for America to live up to its ideals. Instead, they reimagined democracy through a lens of faith.
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Nowhere was this more evident than in Los Angeles, where the physical and spiritual landscape offered room to build anew. When Seymour arrived from Texas in 1906, he found a city in flux, with Black migrants, Mexican laborers, white spiritual seekers, Chinese railroad workers, and German and Polish Jews all navigating new lives.
The young preacher’s message of spiritual revelation met this moment with radical clarity. Instead of traditional sermons and formal liturgy, Seymour’s Pentecostalism emphasized direct and experiential encounters with the Holy Spirit as described in the Book of Acts . Under his leadership, Azusa Street became a space where rigid hierarchies collapsed, at least for a while. Women could preach. Black pastors baptized white immigrants. Worshippers spoke in Spanish and Yiddish. The Los Angeles Times mocked it as chaos. But Seymour saw it as a divine intervention. What made Azusa powerful was the insistence that spiritual authority did not follow the logics of race, gender or class. Dignity and power could be shared, not hoarded.
Seymour was not alone; other Black religious leaders in early 20th century Los Angeles embraced a similar vision. The Rev. Prince C. Allen, known for his spectacular revivals and interracial gatherings, spoke of a church that would “gobble all the others,” suggesting that Pentecostalism’s spiritual fire could consume racism at its roots.
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The Rev. J. Gordon McPherson, called the “Black Billy Sunday,” preached to multiracial crowds across Southern California. “This is the way it will be on the judgment day,” he declared in the pages of the Los Angeles Times. “The white millionaire of Pasadena is likely to find himself standing at the bar of God by the side of his colored houseman, and they will be on exactly the same footing. If we do a little of the mixing now, it won’t be so surprising.” In tent meetings, street revivals, and mass baptisms at Echo Park Lake, these leaders turned public space into spiritual commons. They were not politicians. But they were democratic visionaries. Black churches became training grounds for civic life, offering food, shelter and job opportunities. More than that, in a city that treated Black migrants as invisible, these congregations made people feel seen.
In the decades that followed, Black churches built upon this work, outpacing other civic institutions by offering women leadership roles, redistributing labor and housing resources and helping Black Angelenos launch businesses at a time when lenders denied them access to capital.
Members of L.A.’s People’s Independent Church of Christ, founded by Black migrants in 1915, explicitly referred to their ideology as “democratic religion.” The church’s second pastor, the Rev. Clayton D. Russell, helped create the Negro Victory Committee in 1941 to protest racial discrimination in Los Angeles’ defense industry.
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Russell understood that the struggle for Black freedom was — and would always be — bound up with the struggles of other communities of color. The church sent a delegation to the 1943 Mexican American Conference to declare Black Angelenos’ solidarity with the wrongly convicted Mexican American teenagers in the now-infamous 1942 Sleepy Lagoon murder case.
“We cannot have Victory abroad without the fullest support from the people at home,” Russell wrote at the time, in the Black newspaper the California Eagle. “We must stop the persecution of minorities to have a united people.”
It’s easy to romanticize migration as a one-time journey. But for African Americans in the early 20th century, migration was an ongoing practice of rebuilding. It required courage but also imagination. To move to Los Angeles was to believe that something different was possible.
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Although they were not immigrants in the traditional sense, many African Americans who left the South for the U.S. West in this period called themselves “emigrants.” That word mattered. It signaled a shift in self-understanding. No longer tethered to the brutal legacy of slavery, they were redefining their relationship to the nation. Charlotta Bass, who arrived in Los Angeles in 1910 and later became editor and owner of the California Eagle, described stepping into the city as entering a “new country.” That was the scale of their hope.
Azusa Street did not last forever; eventually, the revival fractured along racial lines. But its legacy endures, as we confront a democracy in distress. We live in a moment when immigrants are demonized, voting rights are being eroded and public trust is fragile. But the lesson of early Black migration is that democracy has always been made and remade by ordinary people, practiced in churches, kitchen conversations, street corners and classrooms. It lives wherever people gather to resist the hierarchies that divide us. If we want to save American democracy, we should heed the lessons of the people who had faith, and courage, to begin again.
Cori Tucker-Price is an assistant professor of religion at UC Santa Barbara and author of a forthcoming history on race and religion in L.A. This article was produced in partnership with Zócalo Public Square.
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Ideas expressed in the piece
The Azusa Street revival of 1906 serves as a powerful model for American democracy, demonstrating how a one-eyed Black preacher named William J. Seymour created one of the most racially integrated religious gatherings in American history in a converted Los Angeles horse stable. The author argues this revival practiced a form of democracy that few had ever witnessed, with Black, white, Asian, and Latino worshippers coming together in defiance of segregation-era logic.
Black migration during the early 20th century represented a sacred journey comparable to the biblical Exodus, as African Americans fled Jim Crow violence and brought with them a moral vision that could remake American democracy. Rather than waiting for America to fulfill its promises, these migrants reimagined democracy through faith, understanding their movement as both physical and spiritual liberation from bondage.
Pentecostalism under Seymour’s leadership collapsed traditional hierarchies by emphasizing that spiritual authority transcended race, gender, and class distinctions. The author highlights how women could preach, Black pastors baptized white immigrants, and worshippers spoke in multiple languages, creating spaces where dignity and power were shared rather than hoarded.
Black religious leaders like Rev. Prince C. Allen and Rev. J. Gordon McPherson extended this democratic vision beyond Azusa Street, conducting interracial revivals and mass baptisms that transformed public spaces into spiritual commons. These leaders functioned as democratic visionaries who understood that racial integration in worship prefigured the equality that would exist on judgment day.
Black churches became crucial training grounds for civic engagement, providing food, shelter, job opportunities, and leadership roles for women while helping launch businesses when traditional lenders denied access to capital. The author points to specific examples like People’s Independent Church of Christ, whose members explicitly called their approach “democratic religion” and worked to support other communities of color facing discrimination.
Different views on the topic
Contemporary media outlets heavily criticized the Azusa Street revival, with the Los Angeles Times describing participants as “breathing strange utterances and mouthing a creed which it would seem no sane mortal could understand” and practicing “the most fanatical rites” while working themselves “into a state of mad excitement.”[2] The newspaper further complained that “night is made hideous in the neighborhood by the howlings of the worshippers who spend hours swaying forth and back in a nerve-racking attitude of prayer and supplication.”[2]
Religious authorities and Christian theologians criticized the revival participants for “behaviors considered to be outrageous and unorthodox, especially at the time,” reflecting widespread theological opposition to the movement’s practices and claims.[1] The revival’s emphasis on speaking in tongues and dramatic spiritual manifestations challenged established religious conventions and drew skepticism from mainstream Christian denominations.
Charles Fox Parham, who had been Seymour’s teacher and mentor in Texas, became one of the revival’s harshest critics, denouncing Azusa Street as “spiritual power prostituted.”[4] As a racist, Parham was particularly “appalled at the mixing of whites and blacks in the church and tried unsuccessfully to wrestle the work away from Seymour,” demonstrating that even within Pentecostal circles, the integrated nature of the revival faced opposition.[4]
The revival’s impact proved limited in duration and scope, with historians marking its end between 1908 and 1915, and internal conflicts ultimately undermining its unity.[3][4] The movement suffered from leadership disputes, with “two women co-workers absconded with the mission’s mailing list,” preventing Seymour from raising support, and “most of his remaining congregation fell into an anti-Trinitarian heresy and abandoned him.”[4]
Pentecostals faced widespread “derision and even outright persecution” due to “the noisiness of Pentecostal meetings, the babble of tongues, and the frequent refusal of adherents to accept medical care,” indicating that their practices were often rejected by broader society.[4] The press regularly “jeered” at the revival, and the movement’s participants encountered significant social resistance to their religious expressions and beliefs.[4]
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