Text size:

Preacher George Baker tangled with Long Island authorities early in his famous ministry

Divine Intervention in Sayville

By George DeWan | Staff Writer

God bought a house in Sayville in 1919. Thirteen years later he was driven out of town. This deity was the charismatic black preacher Father Divine, the rags-to-riches evangelist who by the Depression years of the 1930s built up a worldwide following. Sayville was his launching pad. The faithful really did think that Father Divine was God, and he did little to dissuade them. In 1932, toward the end of his sojourn in Sayville, Divine stood trial in Mineola on charges of maintaining a public nuisance at 72 Macon St. (or Avenue; even Sayville's street signs can't seem to agree on this point). Eva Connelly, of 89 Macon St., testified about all the religious whooping and hollering that was going on just down the street.

"I phoned to Divine's place one night and I asked if the noise could be stopped," Connelly said. "A voice I believed to be his replied, 'Do you know whom you are talking to? This is God himself."'

Before he moved to Sayville at about age 40 -- the first black man to own property there -- Father Divine had been an itinerant preacher in the South. By the time he left Sayville for the more welcome confines of Harlem, on the heels of a stormy and widely publicized conviction -- later overturned -- on the public nuisance charges, he was on the brink of stardom.

"The Sayville period is critical," a Divine biographer, Jill Watts, an associate professor of history at California State University, said in a recent telephone interview. "By the time he got to Sayville he had his religious ideology in mind. Sayville provided him the base to build his following. Sayville is the place that made him famous."

Although the details of his earlier life are not all that clear, Divine was born George Baker in 1879, the son of former slaves, in a black ghetto in Rockville, Md. As a young man, he began preaching in the South as The Messenger, claiming to be the son of God. In 1915, The Messenger headed north, eventually living in Brooklyn with a dozen disciples. His strictly enforced moral code included a ban on sex, smoking, profanity, drugs and alcohol.

In the fall of 1919, he answered a newspaper ad for a large house in Sayville for sale to "colored" by an owner seeking to spite a neighbor with whom he had been fighting. Macon Street was now integrated. And The Messenger took a new name: Rev. Major J. Divine. His followers called him Father, Father Divine. "Drawing elements from Methodism, Catholicism, the black church, and storefront traditions, he produced a foundation that potentially had broad appeal to people from diverse religious backgrounds," Watts writes. Divine held no job, though he never lacked for money. He found jobs for his disciples, and many of them, who were known as "Angels," assigned all their property to him. Evenings and Sundays were devoted to worship services. Divine and his disciples were model citizens, repairing, scrubbing and repainting the house, landscaping and gardening, mowing the grass and generally keeping a low profile in the community.

Toward the end of the decade of the 20s, however, the gatherings at 72 Macon St. began to increase in size and volume, as Divine added free banquets as regular attractions. His increasing congregation included both whites and blacks, and they came from far and wide. "The racial mixing and increasing numbers of African-American visitors alarmed his white neighbors," writes Watts. "Many began to fear that his activities and the presence of more blacks in Sayville would drive down property values."

After much prodding by white Sayville residents, Suffolk County District Attorney Alexander G. Blue hired a black Harlem woman as an undercover agent in 1930 to spy on the Divine household. But no violations were found. The Suffolk County News headlined the news story:

"County Prosecutor Says It's No Crime for Man to Harbor Delusion That He Is the Saviour."

But a year later, Divine was indicted "on a charge of maintaining a public nuisance," the News reported on May 8, 1931, "in having disturbed the peace, rest and quietude of his neighbors by boisterous singing and shouting during the late hours of the night."

As the trial neared, things got ugly in Sayville. However, the race question was often only hinted at. In October, the editor of the News, Francis Hoag, insisting in an editorial that he was not a "bigoted" man, deplored "the influx of hordes from the black-belt of Harlem."

A little after midnight on Sunday, Nov. 15, police raided the house at 72 Macon St. and arrested Divine and 78 others for disorderly conduct. The following Saturday, 700 persons met at the high school to discuss how to deal with the "menace" on Macon Street. Former supervisor Charles Milton Rogers set the tone for the meeting. "Unless this man, this so-called Messiah, is driven from this village, we might as well shut up shop," Rogers said. After a change of venue from Riverhead to Mineola because of alleged "local bias," Divine went on trial in May, 1932, in Nassau Supreme Court. Jurors found Divine guilty of maintaining a public nuisance after deliberating only 15 minutes, a conviction that would later be reversed by an appeals court that found presiding Justice Lewis J. Smith guilty of prejudice against Divine. Smith gave Divine the maximum penalty of one year in jail and a $500 fine, but not before letting the public know what he thought of the Sayville Messiah.

"I have information that this man is not a moral man, but immoral," Smith said. "I believe that he is not a useful member of society, but rather a menace to society."

Divine would have the last laugh. Five days after the sentencing, the 55-year-old Judge Smith died of a heart attack. From his jail cell in Riverhead, Divine is reported to have said, "I hated to do it."

Released from jail amid reams of press publicity, Divine was now a national figure, with his best days still ahead of him. Although he kept the Sayville house, he moved his base to Harlem, where a frenzied, hysterical crowd of disciples greeted him at the Rockland Palace. An unidentified reporter for the Suffolk County News was there to record the bedlam.

"Father Divine, when he spoke, outdid them all," the newspaper reported. "He jumped as high as the microphone, he shouted himself into inarticulation. He promised peace and happiness and food and clothing to all the world . . . Worn out by the long day of emotional strain, sinner after sinner repented, wept and danced in glee, and Father Divine promised every one the kingdom of heaven."