Come next Sunday, megachurch Pastor Jamal Bryant and his parishioners at New Birth Missionary Baptist Church in Georgia won’t just be remembering those who died serving in the United States military, as many are expected to do on Memorial Day weekend.
In what he calls an expression of “righteous indignation,” Bryant announced on Sunday that he and his parishioners will protest for 9 minutes and 40 seconds outside a Target store in Conyers, Georgia, to mark the fifth anniversary of George Floyd’s killing by police in Minneapolis, Minnesota.
Members of another 67 churches nationwide are expected to walk out of their churches in support.
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“Next Sunday will mark the fifth anniversary of the murder of George Floyd. Next Sunday is the fifth anniversary, where the world stood still as a consequence, hallmarking that moment. Next Sunday, we are going to Target in Conyers,” Bryant told his congregants. “We are not going in. We’re going outside in righteous indignation, and so, as a consequence, we are going for prayer.”
Floyd, a 46-year-old African American man, died on Monday, May 25, 2020, in the custody of four now-fired Minneapolis police officers as he was arrested for using counterfeit money.
Floyd’s death, which was caught on video, triggered violent protests in that city, which spread to other locations across the country, including Memphis and Los Angeles. The approximately 10-minute video of the encounter shows a handcuffed Floyd lying face down, begging for his life and crying for his mother while Officer Derek Chauvin knelt on his neck.
Chauvin, who was convicted of murder, knelt on Floyd’s neck until he began to bleed from his nose and became unresponsive. Even after Floyd became motionless on the ground, Chauvin continued pressing his knee into Floyd’s neck for several more minutes as bystanders begged him to have mercy. A medical examiner who testified during the trial said that Floyd’s heart disease and use of fentanyl were contributing factors in his death but were not the direct cause.
It was widely reported that Chauvin knelt on Floyd’s neck for 8 minutes and 46 seconds, but it was later confirmed to be 9 minutes and 29 seconds.
It’s unclear where Bryant got the time 9 minutes and 40 seconds, but his team confirmed with The Christian Post that will be the duration of the protest. They claimed it’s to correspond with the time Floyd spent suffocating.
“I’m telling you, Newbirth, you are an influential church. You’re an influential ministry. Next Sunday, I hope you’ll cheer with me; not only will we be doing it, but 67 churches around the country,” Bryant declared. “Sixty-seven churches are going to walk out of their church just as we are doing here in Atlanta. It’ll be at 12 noon.”
Bryant’s protest at Target comes after he rejected an offer by the retail giant last month to settle an ongoing dispute over the company’s decision to scale back its diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) initiatives.
The rejection of Target’s offer followed a 40-day protest fast by Bryant and his supporters, which included not shopping at Target. That effort is part of a larger grassroots Target Fast campaign. The campaign called on Target to honor a pledge to invest $2 billion into black-owned businesses, deposit “250 million amongst any of our 23 black banks,” restore “the franchise commitment to DEI,” and “pipeline community centers at 10 HBCU to teach retail business at every level.”
Target offered to honor its pledge to invest $2 billion into black-owned businesses by July 31, but Bryant said it wasn’t enough.
“We had four asks and only walked away with one thing. I want to tell you what that one thing is. Target has agreed that by July the 31st, they will complete the pledge of $2 billion for black business,” Bryant said last month after a meeting with Target CEO Brian Cornell.
“But the other three things we have no commitment on, and we don’t have anything to stand on because their currency does not ride with us,” he said.
African American civil rights leader Rev. Al Sharpton also met with the Target CEO and appeared to come away from the meeting with more of a positive mindset than Bryant, calling it a “very constructive and candid meeting.” Bryant’s team didn’t comment on any differences of opinion between Sharpton and Bryant.
In joining the pushback against Target, Bryant accused the retail giant and other large corporations, such as Walmart, of capitulating to President Donald Trump’s push to end DEI policies that he says “undermine our national unity,” among other things.
Several large U.S.-based corporations have reevaluated their DEI policies in the aftermath of the U.S. Supreme Court’s 2023 ruling, which found that the admissions policies of the University of North Carolina and Harvard University that use race as a factor were unconstitutional. Bryant’s team didn’t comment on why he is only focusing the boycott’s attention on Target.
The Target boycott, which started on March 5, began as the company announced that they expected a “meaningful” drop in their first quarter profits due to “ongoing consumer uncertainty,” soft sales in February and concerns about tariffs, CNBC reported. Across the retail industry, sales were down more than expected to start 2025.
Bryant called Target’s DEI rollback a “spit in the face of black people” and insisted to his congregants that their boycott had caused the share price of the company to tumble.
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