Black activists, business come to ‘win-win’ agreement after protests, boycott
A Columbia business has pledged to give back to its predominantly Black community after an incident with a Black customer sparked an economic boycott.
Beauty Max and Cellular, located off Beltline Boulevard, has partnered with local activist group One Common Cause Community Control Initiative for the pledge, saying it will contribute to after-school programs, community clean-ups and other events to help the Booker Washington Heights and Belvedere neighborhoods.
On June 20, a Black teenager with a developmental disability was accused of shoplifting by a Beauty Max employee, said Sonya Lewis, the media liaison for the One Common Cause group. The employee struck the teenager and made him empty his pockets and backpack, but no stolen merchandise was found, Lewis said.
Soon after, community members began to protest and boycott the store, and a surge of negative reviews were posted online. Organizers said after seeing the violence that erupted at May 30 protests downtown, they wanted to demonstrate peacefully and, while the police were called on one occasion, were able to do so.
Meanwhile, the owners, an Asian-American couple, reached out to leaders of the boycott during its first stages.
“There was never a time where we didn’t have dialogues,” said Jerome Bowers, the executive director and CEO of the One Common Cause organization. “From the first day that we were out here boycotting, we’ve had dialogue with the store owners. And, you know, they understood the situation. They were concerned about the situation themselves.”
Over the next several weeks, that dialogue continued, resulting in the pledge for better community relations.
“The business owners understood that this is a poverty-stricken community, that this is a very poor community, but yet these poor people still come up here and they patronize the business,” Bowers said. “So therefore, we communicated with the business owners that it would be in their best interest to contribute to programs in the community that would prevent the occurrence of crime.”
The employee involved in the June 20 incident was fired, and at the suggestion of protest leaders, the owners also hired a Black employee. Lewis also said community organizers have promised to support and help Beauty Max moving forward.
“(Today’s) not going to be the stop,” said Jonathan Tyler, chief operations officer for the One Common Cause group. “This actually is just the start of the beginning of a new adventure for everybody.”
One of the store owners stood alongside the One Common Cause organizers Friday but declined to be interviewed.
The successful resolution of the economic boycott stands in stark contrast to the continuing boycott of United Convenience Store and Shop and Save Liquor on Harden Street, where the owner, Youseff El Ammouri, has been accused of striking a Black woman and using a racial slur after she tried to give pizza to homeless individuals outside the store.
Protests and boycotts of that store are still ongoing, and Bowers said the difference has been the owners’ reactions.
“Here, we have business owners that were able to say, ‘Hey, we know that we were wrong. And we would like to try to recompense the community in whatever way that we can,’” Bowers said.
Moving forward, Bowers said, the One Common Cause organization will continue to use economic boycotts as a form of peaceful protest against business owners accused of racial discrimination. It’s an approach J.T. McLawhorn, president and CEO of the Columbia Urban League, praised as an effective method to enacting change.
“I want to just to commend this group, because they epitomize what Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. said about non-violent social responsibility,” McLawhorn said. “And so, they have accomplished the same outcome that Dr. King told us that we must do. They all had a peaceful boycott, and as a result of the peaceful boycott, they were able to negotiate something that is a win-win for the total community.”
