Founded in 1897 and formally incorporated in 1907 by Bishop Charles Harrison Mason in Memphis, Tennessee, COGIC is the largest African American Pentecostal denomination and the largest Pentecostal body in the United States by some estimates, with over 6 million members. Mason, who had a formative experience at the Azusa Street Revival in Los Angeles in 1906, brought the Pentecostal fire back to Memphis. The Mason Temple in Memphis — COGIC's flagship sanctuary — is where Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. delivered his 'I've Been to the Mountaintop' speech on April 3, 1968, the night before his assassination.