Streeter: Pastor Jamal Bryant apologized for implying the Target boycott was over. It never was.

Last week, the airwaves and interwebs were abuzz over Baltimore native Pastor Jamal Bryant declaring the national Target boycott over.

He said the company met three of the four demands — fulfilling the company’s $2 billion commitment to Black businesses, investing in historically Black colleges and universities and investing in Black-owned banks.

This was news to most of the people who haven’t stepped foot in the bull’s-eye-bedecked behemoth since January 2025, when it ended its commitment to diversity, equity and inclusion efforts after the Trump administration began urging public and private entities to do so. Target quickly lost billions in market share. Costco publicly ignored the president’s suggestion and made money.

Bryant, once a popular pastor at Baltimore’s Empowerment Temple AME Church who now heads Georgia’s New Birth Missionary Baptist Church, started his own parallel effort last March. He has now apologized on his podcast for implying that the whole thing was over, that he was somehow authorized to declare it so, and that we were all picking up our red-and-white shopping bags to head back.

There was a confusion of movements and another age-old lesson in listening to activists and boycotters, particularly Black women. Because we’re not going back.

“Absolutely not,” said Belle Burr, a Baltimore actor who’s been boycotting Target since even before last year. “He doesn’t speak for us.”

Not even a speaker as convincing as Bryant can make us take our money where it, but not us, is wanted.

Local Black activists in Minnesota, where Target is headquartered, called the boycott early last year. Since the murder of George Floyd in 2020, not far from those headquarters, the company had appeared to wholeheartedly support representation by Black, LGBTQIA+ and other marginalized groups in employment and business. Then it immediately and shockingly kowtowed to the new presidential administration.

“It’s like someone sidled up to me and pretended to be my friend and care about the things I cared about, and now it’s so clear you’re not even going to pretend to care?” said Baltimore comedian and activist Blaire Postman.

Former Ohio state senator Nina Turner helped take the boycott national, and all of us making that store rich didn’t need much convincing to take our business elsewhere. As a former Target devotee who’d spent nearly $900 there one Christmas season, the initial annoyance became a commitment.

Soon came Bryant’s “Target Fast,” meant to coincide with that year’s Lenten season and draw the support of the faith community. A reported 300,000 people pledged to support the effort, which extended more than a year past its initial 40 days. After meeting with the company’s new CEO, Bryant declared the fast over, even though it didn’t yield everything it asked for.

The biggest thing unrealized was a recommitment to DEI, the chief demand of the initial boycott. So it didn’t make sense to end a darned thing. At this point, all of the women I interviewed doubt there’s anything the retailer can do to bring them back.

“As far as I’m concerned, Target showed us who they are,” said Baltimore native and author Tonya Abari.

In his 20-minute mea culpa, Bryant said he’d heard the public’s “emphatic outcry” that “no matter what happened, you were not going back. I made assumptions that were not true.”

He explained those assumptions were based on his confusing the boycott with his fast. He called his announcement “out of touch with what the community wanted.”

I reached out to Bryant, a former classmate of mine at Baltimore City College high school, through his media representatives, but was told he wasn’t speaking to press at the moment. Target’s corporate communications staff said in a statement that they were “more committed than ever to creating growth and opportunity for all.” That “for all” and not “for Black people” is doing a lot of work.

The statement also named previously announced initiatives like awarding $10 million in scholarships to HBCU students, a $100 million investment in the last five years to Black-led organizations, and the fulfillment next month of that $2 billion investment in Black business.

But there was nothing new promised and no mention of DEI. Interestingly, Target and its new CEO, Michael Fiddelke, did not comment specifically on the end of the fast.

What struck so many of us is what seems like just another example of women, particularly Black women’s voices, being overpowered. The original organizers said they’re not ready to return. Bryant, in changing his position, said his intention was to “walk alongside them and never walk in front of them. Let the record show that it was Black women who were at the helm.”

Bryant also insisted that he was not compensated in any way by Target. Even though he said that Fiddelke, who just got there in February, has admitted that the company “handled the Black community in error.” Again, that admittance hasn’t resulted in a new commitment to DEI.

So what good is it?

Abari’s first high school job was stocking the bookshelves at the Towson Target store.

“I used to say, ‘Some day I’m going to have a book here,’” she said. Decades later, her board book for kids “My Hair, My Crown” was indeed at Target stores, “a super happy moment.”

But she didn’t want people to get it there. “There’s no reason to buy it from Target,” said the author, who now purchases some of the Black-owned brands sold there directly from their websites.

She now practices “conscious consumerism,” checking out which causes businesses support, who is on their board and where they put their money.

Bryant’s implication that the sacrifices boycotters made left them with nothing to show for them is damning. It’s a slap in the face, an assumption by a gazillion-dollar corporation that we can easily be bought.