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CHAPTER?
The Buy Where You Can Work Campaign, 1933

In mid-June 1933, the Afro reported that the Prophet Kiowa Costonie, called
the "New Messiah" by some of his followers, had come to town:

Discovered here about four weeks ago when tall stories of miraculous
healings and divine cures drifted to the Afro-American, the writer
investigated and found the healer besieged by hundreds in the basement of
Shiloh Baptist Church where, amid demonstrations of religious frenzy, the
man whom thousands were following from church to church made cripples
walk, deaf hear, blind see simply by the laying on of his long tapering
hands.

Thousands... following from church to church" may have been something
of an overestimate, but Costonie was obviously a man of great religious charisma
and personal attraction. Often described with words like "suave" and "immaculately
dressed," Costonie was, as Juanita Jackson Mitchell recalled, "a handsome man."

He had slanted eyes. He said his mother was Indian. He had these
beautiful eyes that were a bit slanted  And he put a beautiful turban, with
gold in it on his head.

There was more to Costonie than faith and attractiveness, however. He also
preached racial pride and, in Juanita Jackson Mitchell's words, "had this racial
advancement emphasis." Within a few months of first appearing in Baltimore,
Costonie brought his considerable skills to bear in the cause of racial advancement
by introducing a campaign to boycott all white-owned stores in the Black
community that refused to hire Black workers. This campaign caught the
imagination of large sections of Baltimore's Black population.

Of course, Costonie's campaign was introduced in the context of rising
struggle in the African American community. The Communist Party had been
leading the Euel Lee defense campaign for nearly two years. The City-Wide Young
People's Forum (the Forum) had also been functioning for nearly two years, and,