Family Red Apple boycott

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Location of Family Red Apple on a map of New York City.

The Family Red Apple boycott, also known as the "Red Apple boycott", "Church Avenue boycott" or "Flatbush boycott",^[1] was the starting point of an eighteen-month^[2] series of boycotts targeting Korean-owned stores that The New York Times described as "racist and wrong."^[3] It began in January 1990^[4] with a Korean-American-owned shop called Family Red Apple at 1823 Church Avenue in the Flatbush section of Brooklyn and extended to other stores, both within and beyond the original neighborhood.^[3]

The boycott coincided with the economic downturn and recession that had exacerbated poverty, crime and drug use in underprivileged New York neighborhoods during the first half of the 1990s. The racially-motivated boycott presaged the Crown Heights riot the following year, which further compromised relations between Jewish-American and African-American communities in the borough, and diminished support for mayor David Dinkins' tenure in the city.

During the latter half of the 1990s, as crime and unemployment rates plummeted in the city, community relations between Korean business owners and Black protesters—some of whom had been radicalized by the racialist rhetoric espoused by black nationalists (such as Robert (Sonny) Carson)—and Asian and Jewish residents generally improved. As early as 1991, the Family Red Apple boycott ended amicably, with a "steady stream of customers" frequenting the Korean-owned grocery store after the previous owner relinquished his lease.^[5]