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discovery, he began to experiment with it as a hobby.
By the age of 18 years, Costonie claimed that he had become a political
leader in Boston and the vice-president of the Massachusetts State League of
Colored Political Clubs, although he was still too young to vote. While in Boston
he opened a recreation parlor and speculated in real estate, quickly losing all his
money. He worked the railroads again, saving $1,500, which he then invested in a
show in New York called "A Manhattan Cocktail." The show failed in two weeks,
and he was on the road again, this time touring with veterans of the Ziegfield
Follies in a production called "Hot Chops." When his touring landed him in
Washington, D.C., he decided to settle for a while, and he resumed work on the
railroads, engaging in some faith-healing on the side. During 1928, he involved
himself in electoral politics and rose to a high position in the Herbert Hoover
Campaign Committee, receiving for his troubles a patronage job and entrance to
the high Black society circles in the capital. After a whirlwind romance, he married
Emma Stewart, the daughter of a Black "aristocratic" family in 1929. However,
given his humble background (something he liked to stress), he could not adjust to
the "continual rounds of gay festivities" of society life, and she could not adjust to
his faith-healing and his old and continuing friendship with an actress. In 1931,
CuStonie left his wife and began his travels again, this time devoting his energies
fully to faith healing. In 1933, while Costonie was conducting revivals in Baltimore
and Philadelphia, news broke that Emma Stewart had divorced him. The Afro,
which carried a full account of their split, delighted in the irony that as pan of his
revivals Costonie conducted a series of "talks to women only," advising them on love
and marriage.
In many ways, Costonie was similar to a number of mystical, charismatic
figures, who, often affecting racially-conscious and Black-nationalist stances,
appeared in the United States in the post-Marcus Garvey period and proliferated
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