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alleged traitors to the boycott cause, including several ministers, were publicly
denounced- not only by Costonie but also by Josiah Diggs- and suspected "stool-
pigeons" were pointed out and interrogated at length during at least one movement
meeting. The degree of contention, however, in the movement should not be
exaggerated, for it did not seem to significantly affect the boycott itself. Moreover,
it is very difficult to untangle the contradictions, to determine, for example, how
much of the opposition to Costonie was really opposition to boycotting, to
Costonie's evolution from a primarily religious to a primarily political figure, to his
allegedly fraudulent faith healing activities. Nonetheless, the net effect of internal
conflict was to weaken Costonie's leadership at the very time that other forces in
the Citizen's Committee were growing stronger.
Neither the contentions between community and shopkeepers, nor the
differences within the movement were, however, to be resolved in the course of the
boycott. On Friday, December 15, at least three carloads of police pulled up in
front of Bethel A.M.E. Church during a City- Wide Young People's Forum meeting.
Clarence Mitchell later recalled that he and his compatriots thought they were all
going to be arrested, and a rumor subsequently swept the community that they had
been taken to jail. Instead the police served the boycott leadership with an
temporary injunction, obtained by the Northwest Businessmen's Association,
ordering an immediate cessation of the picketing. The boycott leadership decided
it had no choice but to comply, and the picketing phase — the heroic phase - of the
Buy Where You Can Work movement was
The injunction broke the momentum of the boycott struggle at a time when
hopes were high that the movement was unstoppable, and that segregated
employment was about to be swept from Baltimore's Black neighborhoods. There
was some demoralization, but the boycott movement was by no means destroyed. It
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