The NAACP has issued a significant call for Black athletes and fans to boycott public university athletic programs in states that the nation’s oldest civil rights organization asserts are restricting Black voting rights.
Launched on Tuesday, the “Out of Bounds” campaign specifically urges prospective Black athletes, their families, alumni, and supporters to “withhold athletic and financial support” from major public universities located in states that “have moved to limit, weaken or erase Black voting representation.”
Should Black athletes participate, the boycott could significantly deplete rosters for powerhouse football and basketball programs, particularly across the Southeastern Conference and Atlantic Coast Conference.
This initiative comes as the NAACP and other groups respond to a surge in gerrymandering following a Supreme Court decision that diminished a key provision of the 1965 Voting Rights Act.
The boycott comes as civil rights activists have mobilized across the South to protest redistricting plans by Republican state legislatures that eliminate majority-Black congressional districts after the high court’s ruling. Activists have looked for pressure points to dissuade GOP-led states from redistricting maps, including calls for mass protests and economic boycotts.
“Across the South, Black athletes have helped build some of the most profitable college athletic programs in America,” said NAACP President Derrick Johnson. Johnson noted that the programs “generate hundreds of millions of dollars in annual revenue, national television value, alumni donations, merchandising sales, ticket sales, and brand equity — much of it powered by Black football and basketball talent.”
The NAACP’s campaign calls out Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, Texas and South Carolina as states to boycott, arguing that the athletic programs of those states’ flagship universities are especially reliant on Black athletic talent and should protect Black political interests.
“Black athletes should not be asked to generate wealth, prestige, and power for state institutions while those same states strip political power from Black communities,” said Johnson.
Black lawmakers themselves are also putting pressure on athletic leagues to take action against Republican-led states that may redistrict longtime Black members of Congress.
The Congressional Black Caucus on Monday sent a letter to the commissioners of the SEC and ACC athletic conferences, as well as NCAA President Charlie Baker, that its members will oppose the SCORE Act, a bill to standardize athletes’ contracting rights across the country, unless conference leaders oppose GOP-led redistricting efforts in states that include major conference members.
“The Congressional Black Caucus believes institutions that profit from Black talent and Black communities have a responsibility to stand with those communities when their fundamental rights are under attack,” the CBC said in a Monday statement. “Silence in the face of injustice is not neutrality — it is complicity.”
