new info on the "Mullah of San Quentin"

In my recent article on Lucius Lehman, I discuss his short stint as a "speaking in tongues" translator for the Azusa Street Revival in its early days. I gave all the information I had at the time of my writing of the article.

Just today, however, I finally obtained a copy of a national Holiness newspaper from the period--The Pentecostal Herald--that contained a little bit of new data on Lucius. The relevant excerpt from October 3, 1906 is as follows:

"Expert linguists have gone among them [the Pentecostals] to 'expose the fallacy [of speaking in tongues],' and have been confounded to hear languages and dialects from maidens and young women whom they knew, and who confessed they did not themselves know what they were speaking, but the linguist knew, and was pricked to the heart. And one, sent by the Los Angeles Examiner was converted from Mohammedanism to Christianity as a consequence of what one woman said to him in a language which, perhaps, no one in Los Angeles knew but himself, and which she herself had no idea as to what it was she said to him. And when she asked him what she had said, he said: 'Then if you do not know, only God and I shall ever know a part of what you have said to me.' He afterwards said that she had warned him of a sin in his life and the consequent judgment before God if not forgiven, and that this warning had been the cause of his conversion. He never wrote the 'expose' for the Examiner, but when he offered to write the truth concerning it they declined and turned him away."

This article is the first to explicitly state that Lucius rejected Islam in favor of Christianity at the time (previously, all that was stated was that he had joined the movement). Unfortunately, we don't  know how long he continued to claim a Christian affiliation.  We do know, however, that Lucius left Azusa Street in less than a month, and by 1917 was openly professing his faith in and training in Islam. This new article at least adds a new, if small piece to Lucius' religious biography.

The article is important for 2 other reasons as well. It suggests that Lucius may have felt guilty for a previous crime--perhaps the rape of his stepdaughter for which he was convicted? It also indicates that Lucius may have written pieces for LA's newspapers. Hopefully future researchers will be able to find out if these exist.

See the full article here:  http://www.academia.edu/3731536/The_Colored_Genius_Lucius_Lehman_and_the_Californian_Roots_of_Modern_African-American_Islam