The man who led the Azusa Street revival had been made to sit outside his own theology classroom because of his race, and the movement he then led went on to eclipse the teacher who had excluded him.
Excluded, then influential
William J. Seymour, the son of formerly enslaved parents, studied under the Pentecostal preacher Charles Parham but, under the segregation laws of the time, was required to listen to Parham's lectures from an adjoining room rather than sit in the classroom itself. Seymour went on to lead the Azusa Street revival in Los Angeles, a sustained series of meetings running roughly from 1906 to 1909, which became far more influential in shaping global Pentecostalism than Parham's own more limited earlier efforts.
Speaking in tongues, in public, continuously
The revival was marked by glossolalia, ecstatic speaking in tongues, along with reported healings and highly emotional, participatory worship sustained over an unusually long continuous run of meetings, practices that became defining features of the Pentecostal movement as it spread from Azusa Street to congregations across the United States and eventually worldwide.
As this entry's companion article covers
The revival's notable crossing of racial segregation norms of the period, with Black, white and immigrant worshippers participating together at a time when such mixing was widely unusual, is addressed directly in this entry's companion article rather than repeated here.