[[link removed]]

PASTOR BRYANT ON TARGET BOYCOTT AND THE BLACK DOLLAR’S POWER:
‘THEY’VE AWAKENED A SLEEPING GIANT’  
[[link removed]]


 

Interview by Andrew Lawrence
June 11, 2025
The Guardian
[[link removed]]


*
[[link removed]]
*
[[link removed]]
*
*
[[link removed]]

_ The Georgia megachurch leader called for a #TargetFast over its DEI
rollback. Now Dollar General is next, he says, as consumers mobilize
against Trump’s policies _

Pastor Jamal Harrison Bryant calling on people to boycott Target in
Conyers, Georgia, in May., Photo Provided by Jamal Harrison Bryant

 

On 2 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 standing behind a lectern
branded with a Black power fist clutching a cross, the senior pastor
of New Birth Missionary Baptist Church railed against companies
that rolled back their DEI initiatives
[[link removed]] to
appease Donald Trump
[[link removed]].

Explicitly, Bryant, 54, singled out Target – which, among other
things, had pledged
[[link removed]] to
invest $2bn in Black-owned businesses by the end of 2025 as corporate
reparations after the murder of George Floyd
[[link removed]] –
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 the Rev Al Sharpton
[[link removed]],
New Birth’s Target boycott has rivaled the global backlash against
Tesla
[[link removed]] in
its political urgency. It’s also cost the retailer
significant sales
[[link removed]] and foot
traffic
[[link removed]].
(“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 out Cardi B
[[link removed]] and
other would-be allies for betraying the cause.

It’s quite an achievement for a pastor’s kid
and preacher-influencer
[[link removed]] who
has long maintained an interest in serving the greater good. Ten years
ago, Bryant thought about running for
[[link removed]] the
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 a podcast host
[[link removed]] and 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 from the
Montgomery bus boycott
[[link removed]] and still
have no national chain owned by Black people.

[A man wearing glasses and a red sweatshirt speaks outside in a
parking lot]

‘We just had to start small in order to get real traction,’ Jamal
Harrison Bryant says of Black Americans’ growing boycott
efforts. Photograph: Provided by Jamal Harrison Bryant

Third, we’ve asked in no uncertain terms, that they would honor
their commitment to George Floyd’s family
[[link removed]],
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 this Trump administration
[[link removed]], 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 CRITICISM AND
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 REPORTED OVER A HALF
[[link removed]]-BILLION-DOLLAR
LOSS IN YEAR-OVER-YEAR SALES
[[link removed]] AND
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?

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 BOYCOTTERS
[[link removed]] TO
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 online _right 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 roughly three times as many
[[link removed]] stores
as Walmart and Target combined. Seventy-five percent of Americans
nationwide live within five miles
[[link removed]] of
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 affects many Caribbean and African transplants as well as
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 also in the administration’s
crosshairs
[[link removed]].
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_

_Andrew Lawrence is senior features writer for the Guardian US, based
in Atlanta._

* Target boycott
[[link removed]]
* Pastor Bryant
[[link removed]]

*
[[link removed]]
*
[[link removed]]
*
*
[[link removed]]

 

 

 

INTERPRET THE WORLD AND CHANGE IT

 

 

Submit via web
[[link removed]]

Submit via email
Frequently asked questions
[[link removed]]
Manage subscription
[[link removed]]
Visit xxxxxx.org
[[link removed]]

Twitter [[link removed]]

Facebook [[link removed]]

 




[link removed]

To unsubscribe, click the following link:
[link removed]