HARTFORD, Conn. (AP) – A hungry Rev. Cornell Lewis went home Friday morning for a plate of collard greens, and activist Andrew Woods headed off to the Windsor Diner for eggs and bacon, both declaring their 24-hour Thanksgiving Day fast a success.

The men, members of Hartford’s Men of Color chapter, had camped out in the front hallway of a ramshackle clapboard apartment house on the city’s North End, forcing a drug dealer doing business there to close up shop for a while.

“A lot of people have a lot to be thankful for,” said Lewis, pastor of the North End Congregational Church and a Men of Color member. “We’re saying that on this day when people are sitting around waxing eloquent, there are some people who don’t have anything to be thankful for because their quality of life is being eroded.”

Because the Men of Color were there, families living in the apartment house were assured of a tranquil Thanksgiving celebration.

“I really appreciate you all being here,” said Elaine Hightower, who came to the lobby in her housedress down a stairwell decorated with graffiti like “Murda” and “Ho-style.” As she waved children and grandchildren up the stairs to her apartment, she added: “They sit here and smoke in the hallway. I hate it. I hate whoever invented it. I’d like to choke them with my hands.”

Participants in the 24-hour fast included people from St. Patrick-St. Anthony Church, and the newly formed Task Force for Race, Class and Social Justice. The numbers thinned and swelled through the night between two and 12. The three who went the distance were Lewis, Woods, who is Hartford Communities That Care executive director, and Men of Color member Francis Davila.

Lewis said he first felt hunger pangs at mid-afternoon on Thanksgiving Day. They went away, but came back in force in the wee hours of the next morning. The three men napped throughout the night, spelling each other.

The fasters, wearing the Men of Color’s distinctive yellow down jackets, made a point of talking to the apartment dwellers as they passed through the lobby.

“You going to stay all night?” a resident named Roy asked Lewis, who was seated in a cloth lawn chair.

“I got my sleeping bag right there,” Lewis said, pointing to a corner. The group also had heat – first a propane heater that put out too many fumes, which was replaced by a space heater connected to a generator running outside.

Early on Thursday’s vigil, Lewis listened to one building resident describe the troublemakers.

“They are like roaches,” the man said. “You turn the light on, the roaches scatter. They are watching and waiting for you to go.”