William J Seymour (1870-1922) was born in Franklin, Louisiana, to a former slave couple. Although baptised Catholic in his home town’s Assumption Church, as a child he followed his parents out of the faith into the Baptist Church.
At the time the federal government’s Freedmen’s Bureau – in addition to teaching the newly emancipated African Americans skills necessary to live after slavery – was attempting to seduce the Catholics among them into the Protestant faith of their choice (the Bureau of Indian Affairs was attempting the same).
