govern their respective self-generated worlds. Lunatics often clash with
the authorities throughout society for failing to follow the rules of society
and the customs of the culture. Is the interracial group of Pentecostal men
in the photograph lunatics? Does the photograph of these men refl ect
Pentecostalism as lunacy? Is their racial misbehavior a defi ant act of racial
lunacy? 10
Since the Pentecostal behavior was described as insane in a few cases,
and Pentecostal demonstrative worship was deemed crazy in a number of
circles, lunacy was already a trope utilized to read Pentecostals by outsid-
ers. Especially mad was the bizarre interracial customs of Pentecostals,
customs which went against the racial social codes and the law in many
southern states. As a photograph of lunacy, of the uncanny, this 1917
picture communicates racial danger and threat. These Pentecostals acted
out of place; they exhibited racially ecstatic behavior. Elements of early
Pentecostal distinctives were unintelligible, ranging from glossolalia to
grapholalia (writing in tongues). 11
How might one construe where an interracial Pentecostal photograph
of the uncanny fi ts within the narrative arc of early Pentecostalism? The
narrative of Pentecostalism birthed by the Azusa Street Revival includes a
cartoon of interracial Pentecostalism with its leader, William J. Seymour,
an African American, seated front and center fl anked by eight whites and
one other African American. There are cartoons that mock the interracial
beginnings of Pentecostalism, such as the one that presents “Our God
Appointed Leader” as Charles Parham in September of 1906 and William
Seymour in December of 1906. The drawing of Seymour is the head of a
crazed black man with a scruffy beard, mustache, and hair and the drawing
of Parham’s head as well groomed; Seymour and Parham are both depicted
as the heads of different “jack-in-the-box” pop-up toys. Early newspaper
headlines of interracial Pentecostalism announced “Whites and Black Mix
in a Religious Frenzy” and “Crazed Girls in Arms of Black Men.” The
mocking cartoons and jeering headlines of interracial Pentecostal pioneers
in 1906 could be read as the backdrop to the interracial Pentecostal pho-
tograph of 1917 with lunacy as a common trope. A historical narrative
that ties together the two works of visual art and headlines could chronicle
the move from interracialism as the center to the margins of the early
movement. This narrative would highlight, then, the exodus of white
Pentecostals from the lunacy of Pentecostal interracialism, a lunacy ini-
tially denounced by Charles Parham. Interestingly, other expressions of
lunacy such as what most other Christians would name as the lunacy of
VINTAGE PHOTO, VISUAL EXEGESIS, AND 1917 INTERRACIAL... 217