WASHINGTON (RNS) — A historic Black church whose Black Lives Matter sign was destroyed by members of the extremist group Proud Boys is now selling T-shirts using the group’s logo, after the congregation won the Proud Boys trademark as part of a yearslong legal dispute.
“Stay Proud, Stay Black” and “Stay Proud, Black Lives Matter,” read the shirts, which the church, Metropolitan African Methodist Episcopal Church in downtown Washington, put on sale on its website this week. All proceeds from sales go to the church’s Community Justice Fund, whose purpose will be revealed further in the “coming weeks,” according to the church’s site.
The church’s pastor, the Rev. William H. Lamar IV, said in a text to RNS Wednesday (Feb. 12) that the effort was an attempt to “turn evil to good.”
“For the first time in our nation’s history, a Black institution owns property of a white supremacist group,” reads the statement on the church’s website. “Metropolitan African Methodist Episcopal Church now owns the exclusive rights to the Proud Boys trademark, stripping them of the very name they rallied under. This also means that any money the Proud Boys makes from using the trademark must be paid to Metropolitan to help satisfy the multi-million-dollar default judgment.”
The sale of the shirts is the latest chapter in a legal saga dating back to December 2020. In days before the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol, rampaging members of the Proud Boys tore Black Lives Matter banners from the doors and fences of several churches in the nation’s capital and set one on fire in the street.
After Metropolitan AME quickly erected a new version of their sign that read “Black Lives Matter. Today, tomorrow, and always,” the congregation filed suit against the Proud Boys. A judge ruled in the church’s favor in 2023 and ordered the extremist group to pay $2.8 million in compensation. When the Proud Boys didn’t comply, the church legally pursued the extremist group’s trademark and was awarded it earlier this month.
The Rev. William H. Lamar IV, front, leads a Palm Sunday service at the Metropolitan AME Church in Washington, Sunday, March 24, 2024. (AP Photo/Amanda Andrade-Rhoades)
“We decided that in order to be made whole, in order for justice to be served, that we will go after their trademark, because that is valuable,” Lamar told RNS in an interview last week. “They use it for recruiting, they use it for commerce. We are due and owed the money from the judgment, and they will not defy the law without our continuing to press for justice to be served.”
The Proud Boys, a loose association of far-right chapters across the country, are known for their enthusiastic support of President Donald Trump and for using violence against those they see as liberal adversaries. Several have claimed religious inspiration for their actions, with one leader comparing Jesus’ crucifixion to members of the group “sacrificing ourselves for our country.”
The trademark ruling came soon after Trump issued a blanket pardon to Proud Boys who participated in the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol, including their purported leader, Enrique Tarrio, who was arrested before Jan. 6 and sentenced to more than five months in jail in 2021 for charges related to church vandalism and possession of a high-capacity magazine.
Tarrio was later found guilty of seditious conspiracy and sentenced to 22 years in prison related to the Capitol attack but was released from prison last month following the president’s pardon.
Lamar voiced frustration with the pardoning of Tarrio and other Proud Boys, but argued it was in keeping with the country’s long history of white supremacy.
President Donald Trump signs an executive order pardoning about 1,500 defendants charged in the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol in the Oval Office of the White House, Jan. 20, 2025, in Washington. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci)
“America is being America,” he said. “America says there were no rights a Black person had that a white man was bound to respect. America refused to let little Black children go to school. America has sponsored violence to do its political work, both domestically and abroad, and those who were violent against us were pardoned because this is America. Know where you are, and fight to make this place what it says it is, but never has been.”
The legal efforts of his church, Lamar said, make clear the “Black prophetic tradition is alive,” explaining, “we operate from love and justice and a belief that every human being is made in the image and likeness of God.”
He added: “America does whatever it can to keep us from getting power, but we will not stop.”