On 5 February, a month before lent, Jamal Harrison Bryant stepped up to the pulpit of his Atlanta area megachurch. Wearing a sweater bearing Muhammad Ali’s likeness and standingbehind a lectern branded with a Black power fist clutching a cross, the senior pastor of New Birth Missionary Baptist Church railed against companies thatrolled back their DEI initiativesto appeaseDonald Trump.
Explicitly, Bryant, 54, singled out Target – which, among other things, hadpledgedto invest $2bn in Black-owned businesses by the end of 2025 as corporate reparations after the murder ofGeorge Floyd– for going back on its word. He urged the “conscientious Christian community” to link arms with his 10,000 church members and commit to a 40-day “fast” from the company starting on Ash Wednesday.
A month earlier, a number of activists and civil rights leaders had protested in front of Target’s Minneapolis headquarters, calling for a nationwide boycott. But Bryant’s clarion call cut through, perhaps because it invoked a history that Trump has also placed in the crosshairs.
“What we learned from the Montgomery bus boycott is that racist America doesn’t respond to speeches, it responds to dollars,” Bryant intoned, urging parishioners to liquidate their Target stock while acknowledging the risk he was taking in fomenting this protest as Trump was embracing authoritarianism. “I’m saying this before they got a new FBI chief that calls us a terrorist organization. We doing it in decency and in order. Target, you got 40 days to pull it together.”
When those 40 days passed and Target followed through on its DEI rollback, Bryant upped the ante on Ash Wednesday and called for the #TargetFast to shift to a “full-out boycott”. He challenged Black Americans in particular, who are among the big box chain’s most loyal customers, to hold the line. “We are engaged in this battle because you don’t get to walk away from your public commitments to Black people and think there will not be consequences and repercussions,” Bryant said at a town hall meeting in April. “Somebody is going to accept the price, and we don’t accept layaway in 2025.”
Fueled by the strength of 200,000 petition signers and Black business leaders and activists such as theRev Al Sharpton, New Birth’s Target boycott has rivaled theglobal backlash against Teslain its political urgency. It’s also cost the retailer significantsalesandfoot traffic. (“We’re not satisfied with these results,” CEO Brian Cornell said in a call with reporters last month.) Throughout the boycott, Bryant has not hesitated to call outCardi Band other would-be allies for betraying the cause.
It’s quite an achievement for a pastor’s kid andpreacher-influencerwho has long maintained an interest in serving the greater good. Ten years ago, Bryant thought aboutrunning forthe congressional seat held by civil rights hero Elijah Cummings after Freddie Gray’s killing rocked his Baltimore home town, before taking over as the senior pastor of New Birth in 2019. He’s also reinvented himself as apodcast hostand has become an incidental guest star on the Real Housewives of Potomac. (Gizelle Bryant, a lead cast member, is his ex-wife.)
Days after Bryant announced the next phase of New Birth’s consumer challenge, a nationwide fast from Dollar General, he talked to the Guardian about his boycott demands, the Black entrepreneurs who find themselves caught in the middle, and backing the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History and Culture over the Juneteenth holiday.
You have pointed out how much Black Americans spend at Target – $12m a day, by your reckoning. By calling for a boycott, you’re challenging them to make a drastic change in their behavior. Were you challenging yourself, too?
I’m a #GirlDad to four, including three who are in college, so I had to absorb them protesting: “Please, don’t take it away! We go in every week at least for lip gloss.” But when I began to walk it to the disservice that Target is doing to the community, it became a no-brainer. They become some of my greatest disciples on college campuses. That’s been really infectious to a lot of people in the community who didn’t understand that we were not looking for charity or a favor from Target. We’re looking for a partner – even though Black people love Target so much that we’ve already invited them to the cookout and given them a nickname: “Targét”.
What specific demands does the #TargetFast have?
We asked for four things.
The first is because we spend $12m a day, we want them to invest $250m into Black banks so people can have access to capital for home ownership and entrepreneurship.
Second, we asked that they would adopt six HBCUs that have business programs so that young entrepreneurs can learn how to scale and build big box businesses. The reality is we’re 70 years fromthe Montgomery bus boycottand still have no national chain owned by Black people.
Third, we’ve asked in no uncertain terms, that they would honor theircommitment to George Floyd’s family, that they would invest $2bn into entrepreneurs so that their businesses might be able to thrive. So far, that’s the only thing that Target has agreed to.
Lastly, we gave them a blank canvas and said: “Reimagine DEI, even if it has a different name or definition.” I understand the pressure and the weight of thisTrump administration, so if you have to pivot and package it differently, I’m amenable. But I’m also mindful that the top beneficiaries are white women. Even though Black people lag behind, we have demonstrated, through our largesse and altruism historically, a willingness to serve the greater good.
There’s been a fair bit of skepticism within the Black community about singling out Target instead of including Walmart, Amazon and other major retailers. How sensitive were you to that criticismand did it factor into the decision to go after Dollar General next?
So this is the 15th week of the Target boycott. I announced Dollar General in the 13th week. I was of the mind that we had not done organized or unified targeted spending in 70 years, that we really would not be able to see the full brunt of our impact if we went after 14 companies at once. The African proverb says you eat an elephant one bite at a time. Now we have momentum: 50,000 people signed our covenant not to go into Target. We have a directory of more than 150,000 Black businesses we made with help from the US Black Chamber of Commerce that we’ve shared with more than 250,000 email supporters. We just had to start small in order to get real traction. And also you have to be mindful that this boycott wasn’t called by a historic civil rights organization – not the NAACP, the National Urban League, Rainbow Push or the National Action Network. It wasn’t called by a Black church denomination. It was a singular church: New Birth.
In its first quarter earnings report, Target reportedover a half-billion-dollar loss in year-over-year salesand a sharp decline in foot traffic. Do you take any encouragement from that, and does this suggest that they may be ready to listen to New Birth’s demands?
We take it as a victory. I’m grateful that the Kwanzaa principle of cooperative economics is seeing itself in the 21st century. It’s because we’re organized, unified and singular in our focus.
Has Target CEO Brian Cornell reached out to negotiate a detente at least?
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Cornell and I had one meeting the Thursday before Easter, with the Rev Al Sharpton in New York. Then the Tuesday after Easter he was summoned to meet with the president at the White House. We had not heard anything since, which is why we moved to the “canceling” of Target.
For as much buy-in as you’ve gotten from the Black community for the Target boycott, you also have Tabitha Brown – the actor and healthy living influencer who has a lucrative brand partnership with Target –urging would-be boycottersto consider the effect their actions have on entrepreneurs like her. What do you say to that?
I’m disappointed in her. Tabitha didn’t build her brand from Target. She built it from social media. We love Tabitha, but it’s not true that the only way we can support her is in Target. You can open up a drop-ship, and we’ll buy from you onlineright now. People can still support Black brands outside of big box establishments. I want to see Tabitha thrive. I just want to see us move in a different direction.
Why did Dollar General make sense as the next retailer to go after?
People don’t realize Dollar General has roughlythree times as manystores as Walmart and Target combined. Seventy-five percent of Americans nationwide livewithin five milesof a Dollar General. They hire part-time staff so they don’t have to pay out benefits. They inundate impoverished communities and rural areas with 20,000 or fewer residents, fancying themselves as a stopgap solution in food deserts. But most of the food they sell is processed. Those issues combined with the preponderance of Black and brown people who shop at Dollar General and the fact that minorities comprise just very little of their executive leadership are why they came next in the pecking order.
What do you say to shoppers who live in food deserts who figure to be vastly more affected by a Dollar General boycott than boycotting Target?
For those in rural areas or food deserts, we’ve asked them to do an electronic protest, where we give you a sample script to email or deliver over the phone. They can use the #TargetFast hashtag on social. We by no means want to starve families and seniors. If that’s their only option, we’re asking them to take full advantage. But those who have options, we’re asking to pivot.
Has Dollar General responded?
We understand they released a report suggesting they expect business to beat last quarter’s projections. Good morning, Vietnam.
Who’s next? Walmart? Amazon?
We’re focused on the two we have now, but I don’t want this to just be a boycott movement. Between book bans, funding cuts to schools that teach Black history and threats to pull support from HBCUs, there’s so much more at stake. There’s also the immigration issue that also affects many Caribbean and African transplants as well Hispanic Americans. On Juneteenth Sunday, we’re challenging 2,000 churches to raise an offering to support the National Museum of African American History, which is alsoin the administration’s crosshairs. I’m hoping that what happens with Target and Dollar General will be a wake-up call for AT&T, Disney, Levi’s and other companies that have initiated DEI rollbacks to re-evaluate their positions.
How can allies in the Black diaspora and beyond get involved with this movement?
I was recently in Paris, and people were stopping in the streets to say: “I’m not going to Target.” Great, but y’all don’t even have one! It just shows you the global reach of what it is that we’re endeavoring to do.
Why do you think Target and other companies are so inclined to underestimate the power of the Black dollar?
Again, they’ve not seen us move like this in 70 years, and they don’t know that they’ve awakened a sleeping giant. Black people are now alert, mobilized and conscientious about what’s taking place. And we’re not going to spend our dollars with companies that don’t treat us with dignity.
Interview edited for length and clarity