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Harlem in Disorder: A Spatial History of How Racial Violence Changed in 1935

Peace Food Market windows broken

A Peace Food Market operated by followers of Father Divine at 364 Lenox Avenue had windows broken during the disorder. Extensive looting and outbreaks of violence were reported in the blocks of Lenox Avenue surrounding the store. A jewelry store and drygoods store on the same block as the market, and a stationary store, drygoods store and a business of an unknown type on the other side of Lenox Avenue, were among the stores reported looted. The Peace market would have been identifiable as not a white-owned business without any signs, which might have led crowds to avoid looting it.

The Peace Food market is 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. A "few of the faithful" were moving the market's stock to another store, which the reporter described as "damaged" rather than looted. Asked "about the attack on Father Divine's commerce" by the (likely white) reporter, they "would only say: "Peace!" Somehow the reporter established that a woman named "Faithful Mary" had 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 in the Tax Department photograph taken between 1939 and 1941.

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