Has a boycott ever worked?

Sure, boycotts work. The Montgomery Bus Boycott comes to mind, and the UFW boycott of table grapes brought a lot of attention to farm labor issues. Not to mention the boycotting of Captain Charles Boycott by his tenants, which led to the use of his name for the practice.

Ray Charles cancelled a show in Georgia for segregation issues. He was banned from playing Georgia for years. So I guess you can say, he boycotted them and they (music business) boycotted him, until Georgia apologized and oppression was deteriorating.

It depends on what you mean by “worked”. I doubt anybody ever went out of business due to a boycott, but they certainly can alert the business owner(s) that they many people are unhappy with what they’re doing. Sometimes it even inspires them to change course (even if it’s only for the profit motive). And then there’s the matter of alerting the public at large about practices that are oftentimes not even on their radar at all until a boycott happens.

@_Whitetigress The end of that story is later Ray Charles’ song Georgia On My Mind became the state of Georgia’s theme song as a sort of apology and recognition the state had been wrong.

@JLeslie Yes indeed

One of the most famous boycotts in US history (but it wasn’t called that then, because the event predated the term by more than 100 years) helped to turn us from a nation of mostly tea drinkers to mostly coffee drinkers. (Obviously, it wasn’t the entire reason for the switch, but as nominally English colonists, most of those who had English heritage also had a tea habit.)

The Boston Tea Party in 1773 was the punctuation mark to a general colonial refusal to accept and unload (and therefore be required to pay for) tea shipped under the Tea Act.

@CWOTUS – that is true, but it only worked for a while. Iced tea (sweetened) is the regional drink of the bible belt.

@elbanditoroso I don’t know if you can say that. We don’t pay taxes to Britain on our tea, and we don’t answer to British Parliament.

The origin of the term “boycott” came from Ireland during the Potato Famine when a Charles Boycott kept taking all of the food from the Irish people on his property except for potatoes, which there were none of. The Irish decided to just walk of the land and refuse to work for him until he would let them keep some of the food they grew. Well, it worked and know the practice became known as the “boycott.”

@Mr_Paradox, the boycott of Charles Boycott was over tenancy disputes and happened much later (1880s?) than the Famine years.

The Blight is still going on though. Many people still struggle.

Oh, people are struggling still in Ireland, but not due to massive crop failures. There were some before and some after, but the Great Famine was before Boycott’s time. However, to be fair to you, @Mr_Paradox, the famine of 1879 did precipitate the tenancy issues that involved Charles Boycott. Unless I’m wrong, though, 1879 was the last major widespread crop failure approaching anywhere near the scale of the one in the 1840’s.

Forgive me. It’s been a little while since history class.

Oh, no worries. :) Nothing to forgive, really! I’m much stronger in U.S. History, but I did study Irish history for a bit, which is why I know some of this stuff. No need to apologize.