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among their many activities, were in mid-1933 in the midst of a campaign to obtain
Black librarians, Black social workers, and more jobs for Blacks in the public
schools. Even some of the older Black freedom organizations, most notably the
local Urban League, were beginning to reactivate. And throughout 1933, a new
organization of the unemployed, the People's Unemployed League (PUL), was
growing by the thousands every month; approximately 25% of the PUL's
membership was Black.3 In this situation, Costonie's campaign activated even
broader sections of the Black community and brought them into the freedom
movement, while forging a widening alliance among forces in the existing
movement. For a short period, Kiowa Costonie was the most popular and powerful
leader in the Baltimore African American community, and, although his role as
paramount leader was short-lived, his legacy was long lasting.
• * •
Kiowa Costonie claimed to have lived an exotic and adventure-filled life.
He had, for much of his life, been known as Anthony Green, although he said that
he received the name Kiowa Costonie from his Native American mother who had
herself been a well-known faith healer in Utah. Orphaned at four, he told the Afro-
American, he suffered three failed adoptions. At ten years of age he struck out on
the road alone. He became for several years, as he put it, a "happy-go-lucky"
wanderer, working on ships and railroads throughout the U.S., Canada, England,
the Caribbean, and Latin America. But his travels were not all happy, for the led to
his discovery of the realities of racial oppression. Costonie was appalled at the
conditions of Blacks in the South, and, in his words, "I was disgusted with my own
people," apparently for not resisting their oppression. Disgust aside, he began to
"dream that if a man had enough courage, he really could do something for his
people." Also, during these travels, at the age of 14 years, he discovered his faith-
healing abilities when he inadvertently cured a sick shipmate. Thrilled by this
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