Celebrating Black History: Lucy Farrow

Let’s meet another one of God’s warriors as we continue to celebrate Black History Month…

Lucy F. Farrow

Lucy Farrow, niece of renowned black abolitionist Frederick Douglass, was serving as pastor of a holiness church in Houston in 1905 when Charles Parham engaged her to work as a governess in his home. She received the baptism of the Holy Spirit while working for his family. Farrow carried the Pentecostal embers back to Texas, on to Virginia, and later to Liberia. No evidence survives to tell us that she was a good preacher or a sound biblical expositor or even a caring pastor. But her aptitude for igniting the supernatural gifts among others was evident at a 1906 camp meeting near Houston when some 25 seekers stood lined up in a row in front of her. When Farrow “laid hands upon them…many began to speak in tongues at once.”