Over the past year, Black Americans have followed in their ancestors’ footsteps by turning their spending power into a tool of protest.

Whether it was in response to the genocide in Palestine or to companies’ current retreat from diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives, consumers aren’t shopping with businesses that don’t match their values or support their communities. According to a Harris poll shared with The Guardian, four out of 10 Americans have changed their spending habits based on moral views. The report states that 35 percent of Black shoppers and 32 percent of Gen Z shoppers have ditched their favorite stores over politics.

Target’s decision to pull back its DEI promises prompted Black faith leaders to announce a boycott on the retailer during a press conference at the historic Metropolitan AME Church in Washington, D.C. Bishop Reginald T. Jackson persuaded other Black churches to join him in a 40-day boycott beginning Ash Wednesday.

“We’ve got to tell corporate America that there’s a consequence for turning your back on diversity,” Jackson told the congregation. “My brothers and sisters, if our diversity isn’t good, our money isn’t good.”

Today marks the start of a 24-hour economic blackout organized by the People’s Union USA. From midnight Friday to midnight Saturday, the grassroots organization encourages Americans to not spend any money online or in-stores. Debit or credit card purchases were also discouraged. Exceptions were made for essentials, such as medication or emergency supplies, but People’s Union USA asks that the money be spent with small, local businesses and purchases be made in cash. The blackout kicks off a series of events involving week-long boycotts aimed at major retailers, such as Amazon and Walmart.

A similar initiative by civil rights icon Rev. Al Sharpton is circulating on social media, but Sharpton’s organization, the National Action Network, released a clarification on Wednesday. Sharpton said he will not be releasing a list of companies he will boycott until NAN’s national conference in April. In the meantime, Sharpton and his organization are organizing “buy-cotts” at Costo locations in New Jersey, Harlem and throughout the South. Sharpton believes the wholesale giant should be rewarded for doubling down on its DEI efforts in January.

“It is just as important that we support companies that see the business value of DEI and what investing in Black and Brown communities can do for them long term,” Sharpton said in the press release.

While multiple boycotts are being strategized, social media users are praising the success of the Montgomery Bus Boycott in Alabama. The 381-day mass protest was originally supposed to be a one-day event organized by Alabama State University educator Jo Ann Robinson and the Black-led Women’s Political Council. After enduring a racist incident on the city’s segregated buses, Robinson warned city officials of a boycott in May 1954. That was more than a year and a half before NAACP activist Rosa Parks’ arrest for refusing to give up her bus seat to a white person on Dec. 1, 1955. When Robinson heard about Parks, she and the council leapt into action. They printed out flyers to spread word of a boycott starting on Dec. 5th. The one day affair was so effective that Black citizens and civil rights leaders continued the momentum.

Montgomery city buses remained empty for a year. Researchers believe the bus system lost between $30,000 to $40,000 in bus fares each day during the boycott. The economic impact of the protest was the result of a community effort. Community members organized a carpooling system to help Black citizens get where they needed to go. Churches donated station wagons to be used as taxis. When they couldn’t catch a ride, Black employees – determined to see the buses desegregated – hiked miles to work. Georgia Gilmore, a Montgomery cook and activist, kept the movement fed — and funded too.

On Dec. 20, 1956, the U.S. The Supreme Court upheld a lower court ruling that outlawed segregated public transportation. Buses were integrated the next day, marking a major victory for the Civil Rights Movement.

The Montgomery Bus Boycott is known as the nation’s first large-scale protest against discrimination, but it wasn’t the only time a Black-led boycott challenged white supremacy.

So, as Americans hold off on their spending for a day – or longer – here are a few other examples of how Black Americans used their economic power to foster racial justice.

Natchez, Mississippi: Using Black dollars to curb discrimination

Like many boycotts in Mississippi, an act of violence provoked a community to push for social change in Natchez, Miss.

On Aug. 27, 1965, a car bomb planted by white supremacists severely injured George Metcalfe, a fiery leader who led the NAACP’s Natchez chapter. Metcalfe had already stirred up some news earlier that week. He pushed local education officials to desegregate schools, which was required following the Brown v. Board decision that occurred over a decade prior. He was already coordinating a boycott at the mayor’s store for failing to employ Black Mississippians and serving members of the KKK.

Statewide leaders, such as NAACP field secretary Charles Evers, raced to Natchez to help the local community respond to the bombing. Together, they gave city officials a list of demands. To put pressure on the matter, the NAACP and youth activists announced a boycott against white-owned businesses until the following needs were met:

• Denounce the Ku Klux Klan and the Citizens’ Council, another white supremacists organization.
• Enact new housing standards to govern relations between landlords and renters.
• Hire African Americans for both city and store jobs.
• Require police to offer protection for African American funerals and to end acts of police brutality.
• Desegregate schools, pools and parks.
• Appoint African Americans as school board members.
• Prohibit city employees from withholding or threatening to withhold welfare or social security checks from people involved in protests.
• Equalize city services, such as sewers and street sweeping, in all neighborhoods.
• Inform store employees that they should use courtesy titles, such as Mr and Miss, when dealing with all customers.
• Guarantee that all citizens could engage in free speech and political protest without the fear of arrest.

Over the next few months, street picketing took place outside stores while Evers and other leaders met with city aldermen for negotiations. The boycott was such a blow, another white supremacist group asked other white citizens in Louisiana and Mississippi to participate in a “buy-in” campaign to counteract the boycott’s effects.

On Dec. 4, 1965, city officials agreed to address all points of the Black community’s demands, thus ending the boycott. Evers exited the negotiation meeting pleased.

“Everything we asked for we have gotten concessions on, and then some,” he said.

Nashville: ‘No Fashions for Easter’

During the spring of 1960, Black college students, preachers and civil rights leaders turned the tides of history in Tennessee during one of the largest, most sustained protests in the South.

Their target: downtown Nashville – A district that was bustling with both business and bigotry. African Americans shopped in the area’s department stores, but Jim Crow laws prohibited them from eating at the store’s lunch counters. Students from the city’s HBCUs, American Baptist Theological Seminary, Fisk University, Meharry Medical College and Tennessee Agricultural & Industrial, formed the Nashville Student Movement to challenge racial segregation at eateries and other public spaces. Fisk University students Diane Nash and John Lewis rose into leadership of the movement.

About a month after sit-in protests started at the lunch counters, organizers added an economic component to their plans. Fisk University economic professor Vivian Henderson suggested boycotting the department stores during Easter season, which is one of the most profitable times of the year. Rev. James Lawson held nonviolent workshops to train the students for success.

The motto “No Fashions for Easter” became a rallying cry amongst protestors. Black women supported the students by hopping on phone lines to spread word about the economic withdrawal, which lasted seven weeks. According to a store merchant, the streets of downtown and the department stores themselves were desolate by early April. Merchants experienced a 20 percent loss in revenue.

The sit-ins and boycott didn’t continue without a violent response from white residents. On Feb. 27, white segregationists attacked protesters. Law enforcement arrested 81 protesters for disorderly conduct, but none of the attackers were detained. In April, the home of a local attorney who represented students in court was bombed. The chaos triggered a mass protest that swelled to 2,500 protesters outside of city hall, where Diana Nash asked then mayor Ben West if it was right for Nashville’s white citizens to discriminate against their fellow citizens due to their skin color. After West admitted that discrimination was wrong, Nash then asked if the lunch counters should be desegregated. The mayor said yes.

On May 10, six department stores opened their lunch counters to Black consumers making Nashville the first city in the South to desegregate lunch counters.

Orangeburg, South Carolina: A boycott for a boycott

About four months before the Montgomery Bus Boycott began, a movement was stirring among college students in Orangeburg County, S.C.

In 1955, Black residents were tired of school board officials who were dragging their feet to desegregate their schools following the Brown v. Board of Education decision. South Carolina’s NAACP chapter created and circulated a petition that was signed by 57 Black parents.

A local newspaper published a list of the petitioners’ names, exposing the identities of Black business owners and sharecroppers to the white population who later formed a White Citizens’ Council. The group retaliated against Black petitioners by attacking their economic well being. Orangeburg’s mayor, who operated several businesses including a Coca-Cola franchise, Orangeburg Fuel and Ice and Paradise Ice Cream, stopped deliveries to Black stores, barber shops and other businesses. This caused a Black service station to shut down and another didn’t receive gas during the busy Labor Day weekend. Sharecroppers were ousted off white-owned land and Black employees lost their jobs for signing the petition. On top of these punishments, Coca-Cola and Sunbeam Bread decided to support the White Citizens’ Council.

When word of the retaliation got to Orangeburg’s two HBCUs, Claflin University and South Carolina State College, students organized multiple economic withdrawals of their own that soon spread across the community. The students boycotted Coca-Cola and Sunbeam Bread. SCSC Student Council President Fred Moore galvanized students to push administrators at both HBCUs to cease working with white distributors who cut ties with Black-owned businesses. When school administrators denied the student’s wishes, the students’ initiated a hunger strike.

In early 1956, the statewide NAACP chapter supported the student protest by creating a list of 23 businesses owned by White Citizens Council members to boycott. The rest of Orangeburg’s Black community then joined the demonstrations. A picture of an untouched, pristine Coca-Cola vending machine at an Orangeburg oil station ran in Jet magazine, which inspired Black Americans nationwide to boycott the beverage brand.

While the students’ counter-boycott didn’t lead to the desegregation of schools, many white-owned businesses reestablished services with Black-owned business within just three weeks of the initiation of the Black boycott. The student-led protests of that time architectured a blueprint of movement work that community members, including Black high school students, referenced while continuing the call for equal rights throughout the 1960s.