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the victory over A & P, when Costonie was at the height of his popularity as a
political leader, he struck back at his critics saying he had "a list of names of
persons who were traitors" to the cause of freedom and that "the Ark is about to
leave, and I am giving all the backsliders a last chance to get on."**"

It seems unlikely that many of the backsliders were impressed. Clarence
Mitchell, who was increasingly a leading voice for the younger militants of the
Forum, was certainly not. Mitchell, who had always retained some skepticism
toward Costonie, questioned, in his Afro column, the existence of Costonie's list.
He then ridiculed the whole idea of a cabal of traitors being responsible for the
situation of Blacks in Baltimore, rather than a racist social and political system.**'

During the Pennsylvania Avenue campaign the contradiction between
Costonie's clerical critics and his supporters came to a head in a meeting of, on the
one hand, the Costonie-organized Opportunity Makers Club, led by lawyer and
Forum member Thurgood Marshall, and on the other hand an interdenominational
group of ministers that were trying to figure out how to respond to the boycott — or
more specifically, what to do about all the requests made by boycotters to speak at
Sunday services. In the words of the Afro, the meeting "nearly precipitated a free-
for-all fight" over the accusations by several Baptist ministers that Costonie had
sold "healing handkerchiefs." At another point in the meeting, stink bombs were set
off with the apparent purpose of disrupting the meeting, allegedly by members of
the Opportunity Makers. In this context worried clergy asked about reports if
downtown white companies were about to fire all of their Black employees to
retaliate for the boycott, and Thurgood Marshall strove to refute these as baseless
rumors. Finally, NAACP leader Rev. C.W. Trigg calmed the meeting down, and it
was decided "that the ministers would give the movement their whole- hearted
support," but "they did not... approve of the boycott."^

Meanwhile, as fear of treason within the ranks of the boycotters grew,