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• 1 2021-11-16T20:33:04+00:00 Peace Food Market windows broken 28 plain 2024-06-03T20:45:46+00:00 A Peace Food Market at 364 Lenox Avenue had windows broken during the disorder. The grocery store had been opened in February, 1935, by Faithful Mary, a leading follower of Father Divine, according to an announcement in the movement's Spoken Word magazine cited by historian Roma Barnes. Divine was a Black religious leader whose theology and claim to be God in a body drew criticism from Harlem's Black clergy and leaders. Members of Divine's Peace Mission Movement operated an extensive range of businesses in Harlem, including, by 1936, five other grocery stores, as well as twenty-five restaurants and multiple apartment buildings, houses, and flats that offered food and housing at low rates, activities detailed by historians Roma Barnes and Robert Weisbrot. A sign on the grocery store read, "Where Everybody Can Buy Groceries and Meats at a Low Rate, I Thank You Father," the New York Herald Tribune reported. The Peace Food Market name and sign would have identified the store as not a white-owned business, but as historian Judith Weisenfeld has shown, Divine's Peace Mission included white members in Harlem. That interracialism could have made the market a target of some of those protesting white control of Harlem's businesses; the controversy surrounding Father Divine could also have motivated the attack. Extensive looting and outbreaks of violence were reported in the blocks of Lenox Avenue surrounding the store. The attacks on the market likely started around 11:30 PM. Irving Stekin's businesses at 371 Lenox Avenue and 363 Lenox Avenue, and Michael D'Agostino's business at 361 Lenox Avenue were all looted, as were stores at 372 and 374 Lenox Avenue across the street. The laundry at 367 Lenox Avenue and the South Harlem Rotisserie had windows broken. No one arrested during the disorder was charged with breaking the Peace Food Market window.
  
  
  
  The broken windows in the Peace Food Market are mentioned only in a story in the New York Herald Tribune, apparently because activity there attracted the attention of a reporter in the neighborhood the day after the disorder. He described the business as "damaged" rather than looted. A "few of the faithful" were moving the market's stock to another store. Asked "about the attack on Father Divine's commerce" by the (likely white) reporter, they "would only say: 'Peace!' The reporter was aware that Faithful Mary operated the store, condescendingly describing her as "one of the disciples of the little Negro preacher who says his followers think he is God." That attitude may have contributed to the unwillingness of those emptying the store to speak to him.
  
  No businesses are recorded at 364 Lenox Avenue in the MCCH business survey undertaken between June and December 1935, which does include a vacant store at 362 Lenox Avenue that may be the storefront occupied by the Peace Market at the time of the disorder. A grocery store not visibly affiliated with Father Divine appears at that address in the Tax Department photograph taken between 1939 and 1941. The business at 364 Lenox Avenue in that photograph is a loan office.