Charles Harrison Mason, founder of the Church of God in Christ (COGIC), was born in the mid-1860s on a farm in Shelby County, Tennessee. His parents, Jeremiah and Eliza Mason, later moved the family to Plumerville, Arkansas where Mason was baptized as a teenager in the Baptist Church. Mason first preached in Preston, Arkansas and graduated from Arkansas Baptist College Minister’s Institute. Doctrinal differences led to Mason’s dismissal from Baptist ministry, but he continued to preach throughout Arkansas, Mississippi and Tennessee. In 1897, near this location, Mason received a revelation: he was to name his new denomination the Church of God in Christ. In 1907, Mason officially organized COGIC as a Pentecostal denomination. In 1945 in Memphis, Tennessee, the Mason Temple was completed; it serves as the church’s headquarters. Throughout his career, Charles Harrison Mason was known for his support of racial unity, pacifism, education, civil rights and women in the ministry. He died on November 17, 1961 in Detroit, Michigan and is interred in the Mason Temple. As of 2021, the Church of God in Christ is one of the largest Pentecostal denominations in the United States, with an estimated worldwide membership of 6 million people.