Black Neighborhoods | Day 6 | Azusa! Have you heard of that street?

Day 6

The Address:  312 Azusa Street, Los Angeles, CA 90011

The Story: Have you ever heard someone speak in tongues? If you don’t know exactly what I mean, tune in today.

If you know…you know.

Goosebumps.

This emoji 👀.

The organists and choir stop.

Vrrooop.

God takes center stage.

Skeptics look away.

Believers take note.

During a revival on Azusa Street it happened in a public venue on American soil, journalists came.

“Weird Babel of Tongues”

…was the headline.

On April 18, 1906, The Los Angeles Times printed:

“Breathing strange utterances and mouthing a creed which it would seem no sane mortal could understand, the newest religious sect has started in Los Angeles. Meetings are held in a tumbledown shack on Azusa Street near San Pedro Street, and the devotees of the weird doctrine practice the most fanatical rites, preach the wildest theories and work themselves into a state of mad excitement in their peculiar zeal. Colored people and a sprinkling of whites compose the congregation, and night is made hideous in the neighborhood by the howling of the worshipers swaying back and forth in an attitude of prayer and supplication.”

This was The Azusa Street Revival.

It lasted three years.

How could those journalists, with their poorly veiled racism, possibly understand.

It was a spiritual breakthrough.

A rallying call for the newly freed.

The reclaiming of African know-how

…on American soil.

312 Azusa Street, Los Angelos, California was the official birthplace of the Black Pentecostal Movement, the fastest growing religious movement in American history.

For every Black girl who played the tambourine and knows the response to lyrics “This joy that I have…”

…this is your history.

Our history.

Black history.

And if you KNOW God has brought us through!!!

You better shout!

Somebody ought to dance.