The leaders of America’s largest historically black Baptist denominations are expected to respond this week after megachurch Pastor Jamal accused them and the Church of God in Christ of accepting a $300,000 donation from retail giant Target amid an ongoing boycott of the company over its scaling back of diversity, equity, and inclusion policies.
Bryant, who leads New Birth Missionary Baptist Church in Stonecrest, Georgia, made the claim from his pulpit Sunday, just two months after rejecting an offer from Target to fulfill the company’s pledge to invest $2 billion into black-owned businesses by July 31 to settle the dispute.
He alleged that the Target donation was split four ways between the National Baptist Convention, USA, Inc., the National Baptist Convention of America; the National Missionary Baptist Convention; and the predominantly black Pentecostal Church of God in Christ. The denominations collectively represent approximately 16 million members nationwide.
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“The four presidents of the Convention, they will be gathering and they will make a response before the end of the week,” a spokesperson for the National Baptist Convention USA told The Christian Post Wednesday when asked about Bryant’s claims.
When asked about Bryant’s claims Wednesday, a spokesperson for Target would only confirm that they have a partnership with the NBCUSA and did not address specific donation amounts.
“We’re proud to be partnering with NBCUSA to make a meaningful impact in communities across the country by supporting access to education, economic development initiatives and entrepreneurship programs,” the spokesperson said.
The spokesperson also noted that in the last five years, Target has committed to invest $2 billion in black-owned businesses and brands; supported students at over 20 Historically Black Colleges and Universities; invested $100 million in black-led community organizations; given scholarships to over 30,000 members of their team to advance their careers; committed 5% of company profits to the communities in which they have stores; and volunteered millions of hours to organizations across the country and created meaningful opportunities for the team members to thrive both personally and professionally.
“Going forward, we’re committed to expanding opportunity by supporting small businesses, increasing access to education, and creating the best team to serve the more than 2,000 communities where Target operates,” the spokesperson said.
In addressing his congregants on Sunday, Bryant insisted that he wants the black church to stand together with the black community but suggested that Target had employed what he framed as divisive tactics to challenge that unity.
The megachurch pastor’s claims come as Target’s Chief Executive Officer Brian Cornell said in a Wall Street Journal report last month that the boycott over the company’s decision to end some of their DEI programs is among several factors that led to a decline in their first quarter sales.
While he could not estimate the size of the boycott’s impact, Cornell said that the boycott “played a role in our first-quarter performance.”
“For the last 18 weeks, we’ve been boycotting Target and said there’s no way in the world we going into Target where black people were spending $12 million a day,” Bryant said.
In addition to the demand that Target honors its $2 billion pledge to the black business community “through products, services, and black media buys,” the Target Fast campaign, which Bryant calls a “grassroots movement,” also called on the retailer to: 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.”
Instead of addressing all the demands, which Bryant argues are fair, he accused Target of seeking to go around him to find partners who would, in his words, “sell out” the black community.
“You thought you was going to go around me and go to the National Baptist Convention and then sell out for $300,000. Are you crazy to think that we going to sell out for chump change? You must not know who we are. Our father is rich in houses and land,” Bryant declared to cheers from his congregation.
He pointed out that it was the National Baptist Convention that told Martin Luther King Jr., in 1961, that he shouldn’t take a stand too strongly against injustice, forcing him to break away and start the Progressive Baptist Convention.
“I need you to know it wasn’t just the National Baptist of America, it was also the National Baptist of USA, it was also the Missionary Baptist, it was also the Church of God in Christ. And the $300,000 was not per institution. They gave them negroes $75,000 for them to just sit down and roll over. Not me Jack,” Bryant revealed.
“I called the president of the National Baptist Convention. I said ‘Rev, we can’t go out like that. We are selling ourselves short.’ He said, ‘Jamal give me a couple of days. Let me get the board together.’ I said, ‘Bro, you can get your board together, but Sunday morning I’m going to the mic, and I got to say something, and you got to give me something to work with,'” Bryant recalled.
The megachurch pastor said he gave the president of the National Baptist Convention “one week to send me in writing that the Baptist Convention stands with the boycott, stands with the oppressed, stands with the marginalized, stands with the nameless and faceless people who are on the front line.”
Last Friday, Boise Kimber, president of the National Baptist Convention USA, released a statement highlighting the convention’s partnership with Target during their national meeting in Montgomery, Alabama.
“The National Baptist Convention USA is committed to ensuring that corporations that do business in our communities give back to help rebuild and stabilize neighborhoods. The partnership with Target Corporation is based on our shared commitment to community empowerment,” Kimber said.
He further noted that they are working on a three-year plan that “will be very beneficial to the African American community.”
“If I thought Target was not sincere in their commitment to the African American community — I would be the first one on the picket line. Our communication with Target has been at the highest level and we are continuing the dialogue,” he added.
Bryant does not believe Target has been sincere.
“Over the last couple of weeks, Target [has] been playing in my face. Been hiring internet influencers to go online, rappers and artists and athletes to play and to broadcast outside of Target and in Target, thinking we ain’t going to say nothing,” he said.
“But you ain’t got to talk directly to me. All you got to do is watch the rerun of The Color Purple. Until you do right by me, nothing you do is going to work. We will break Target. We will break Dollar General. And we will break any company that don’t honor our dignity while they trying to take our dollar. The devil is a lie. Something’s got to break.”
In addition to Target, several 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.
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