Central Los Angeles : Activists Demand Apology From Shopkeeper, Threaten Boycott

About 30 community activists, ministers and residents gathered outside a Vermont Avenue wig and hat shop in South-Central Los Angeles Tuesday and announced that they will call for a boycott of the store if the owners do not apologize for allegedly refusing to wait on a black man.

The Rev. Lee May, a pastor at the First AME Church in Pasadena, said at the gathering that on Jan. 20 he walked into Accessory House in South-Central to buy his wife a hat.

He claimed that one of the store owners, whom he described as an Asian woman, told him “no men.”

May said the woman acted frightened, and he asked if she was afraid of him because he was a man and she said she was. He said he then asked if she was afraid because he was black, and said that she replied that she was.

However, friends of the woman who run a store nearby said they believe the incident was a communication failure. They said the woman speaks limited English, and that they believe she did not understand May’s questions. They suggested that the woman may simply have been trying to say that the store did not sell men’s goods.

The store’s owners could not be reached for comment because they closed early Tuesday in the face of the gathering.

After the store refused to sell May the hat, he contacted the Brotherhood Crusade, a South-Central community organization. The Brotherhood Crusade said it sent a dozen black men to the store and they all were refused service.

Danny Bakewell, president of the Brotherhood Crusade, said he has not yet contacted the store owners. He said he plans to confront them today and demand a public apology as well as a written apology to May.