This page was created by Anonymous. The last update was by Stephen Robertson.
Peace Food Market windows broken
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.
This page has tags:
This page references:
- "650 Police Patrol Harlem to Block Renewed Rioting," New York Herald Tribune, March 21, 1935, 1, 2.
- Roma Barnes, "'Blessings Flowing Free:' The Father Divine Peace Mission Movement in Harlem, New York City, 1932-1941," PhD thesis, University of York, 1979, 242-326.
- Judith Weisenfeld, New World A-Coming: Black Religion and Racial Identity During the Great Migration (New York: New York University Press, 2016), 236.
- Roma Barnes, "'Blessings Flowing Free:' The Father Divine Peace Mission Movement in Harlem, New York City, 1932-1941," PhD thesis, University of York, 1979, 282.
- Robert Weisbrot, Father Divine and the Struggle for Racial Equality (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1983), 122-144.
- 364 Lenox Avenue, c. 1939-1941.
- "Father Divine's Mary Ordered to Shut Homes," New York Herald Tribune, March 16, 1935, 5.