Estrelda Alexander was raised "in an urban, black, working-class, oneness Pentecostal congregation in the 1950s and 1960s", but she knew little of her heritage and thought that all Christians worshiped and believed as she did. Much later she discovered that many Christians not only knew little of her heritage but considered it strange. Even today, most North Americans remain ignorant of black Pentecostalism. Black Fire remedies a lack of historical consciousness by recounting the story of African American Pentecostal origins and development.