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League, the Afro, and others, both the established freedom movement and among
the younger rebels were quite open to its use.
It is, though, important to put the Afro's position on job boycotting in
context. In the Afro view, a campaign for jobs in white stores was just one pan of
an overall jobs campaign that demanded Black employment anywhere in city
government or private enterprise that Blacks were barred. The Forum campaign
for Black social workers (in alliance with the Urban League) and Black librarians
in early 1933 was taking up just a portion of the overall campaign advocated by the
Afro. When Costonie made his boycott call later that year he was, in effect, taking
up another part. For the Afro, job boycotting was a part, but only a part of the
broader traditional agenda of the Baltimore freedom movement.
• **
Costonie's initial demands for Black jobs in white stores seemed to yield
some quick victories. Two five and dime stores- Tommy Tucker and Goodman's-
and Max Meyers Shoe Store on the 1700 block of Pennsylvania Avenue all agreed
to hire Black clerks. Shortly thereafter Howard Cleaners and Dyers proclaimed
that it planned to open a new branch on Pennsylvania Avenue with a Black
manager and all-Black staff, and the Atlantic and Pacific Tea Stores (the A & P
markets), which had been the object of Black boycotts elsewhere, declared that it
hired a Morgan College graduate as a clerk.
Shoe store owner Max Meyers even appeared at the Costonie mass meeting
at Perkins Square Baptist Church that announced these victories, and before 450
people made, as the Afro put it, "a speech of thanks for being permitted to have an
opportunity to accept." Costonie reported to the meeting that other white
merchants that were visited were polite, but noncommittal; he declared that they
had until October 15 to hire Black employees or face a picket line. He also
announced that meetings with managers of the A & P and the American Stores
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