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clearly on a roll. Costonie and the Citizens Committee decided to follow up their
victories against the chain stores with a campaign against the smaller white-owned
retail stores in northwest Baltimore, focusing on the 1700 block of Pennsylvania
Avenue. The targeted area was the central shopping location for the community,
with the greatest concentration of Black shoppers, and almost no Black clerks; the
owners of several stores in this vicinity, including Tommy Tucker, Goodman's, and
Meyer's shoe store, had previously promised to hire Black clerks, but had failed to
follow through.
Additionally, this campaign was to be coordinated with a similar campaign
in Washington, D.C., led by the New Negro Alliance; the plan was to pressure
merchants in both cities during the lucrative Christmas shopping season in evident
hopes that the two movements could build off each others momentum. The
Baltimore movement and the Washington movement had been continually in touch
over the previous months, occasionally sending speakers to each others rallies,
especially around their parallel struggles against A &. P. As Juanita Jackson
Mitchell put it "We copied everything they did, they copied everything we
did-anything that would advance freedom." As it turned out, the relationship that
was being built would last, in various forms, far into the future.
The picketing began in Baltimore on Friday, December 8 as the Christmas
shopping was moving into full swing. As historian Jerome Hunter put it,
"Pennsylvania Avenue was transformed from a shopping district to one continual
mass demonstration site." As many as 200 pickets a a time, most but not all of
them young, braved the cold, moving against some 75 businesses. Community
participation in the struggle again reached new heights, as increasing numbers of
people of all ages aided the pickets, gave them shelter from the weather, and stayed
away from the stores. *
The merchants, organized in the Northwest Businessmen's Association,
attempted to put forth a unified front, but business fell drastically during the crucial
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