NAACP Urges Boycott of Southern College Sports Over Voting Rights

The NAACP on Tuesday launched the “Out of Bounds” campaign, urging Black athletes, their families, alumni, and fans to boycott athletic programs at public universities in eight Southern states that have enacted measures to limit Black voting representation.

The civil rights organization named Tennessee, Louisiana, Alabama, Florida, Mississippi, South Carolina, Texas, and Georgia, each with flagship public athletic programs generating over $100 million in annual revenue. These states have redrawn congressional maps following the Supreme Court’s Louisiana v. Callais decision, which weakened the Voting Rights Act.

“What these states have done is not a policy disagreement. It is a sprint to erase Black political power,” Derrick Johnson, President & CEO of the NAACP, said in a statement. “The NAACP will not watch the same institutions that depend on Black athletic prowess to fill their stadiums and their bank accounts remain silent while their states strip Black communities of their voice.”

The campaign calls on football and basketball players currently being recruited by targeted programs to withhold commitments until states restore fair congressional maps and meaningful Black representation, to ask coaches and athletic directors where their universities stand on voting rights, and to consider committing to athletic programs at historically Black colleges and universities (HBCUs).

Athletes already enrolled at targeted programs are asked to use their platforms to elevate fair voting maps and voting rights, to request university leadership issue public statements opposing racial vote dilution, and to consider options including entering the transfer portal.

Non-athletes, including fans, alumni, and donors, are asked to stop financially supporting targeted programs by not purchasing tickets, merchandise, or licensed apparel. Instead, the NAACP urges them to redirect those resources to support athletic programs, scholarship funds, bands, and alumni foundations at HBCUs.

“The state that is working to erase your grandmother’s congressional district is the same state whose governor will stand on the field and celebrate your touchdown or game-winning shot,” Tylik McMillan, national director of the NAACP’s youth and college division, said in a statement. “We are asking young people – recruits, current athletes, fans – to see that connection clearly and to act on it. The Out of Bounds campaign is about redirecting what has always been ours, power and perseverance.”

Recent history offers precedents for political pressure by athletes on their universities.

In 2020, athletes in Mississippi programs spoke out against the state flag, which then featured the Confederate battle emblem, leading to the flag’s change.

In 2015, more than 50 members of the University of Missouri’s football team joined a campus-wide student protest following racist incidents, resulting in administrative changes.

“Out of Bounds” is the latest response by voting rights activists since the Callais decision last month, which prompted redistricting.

On Monday, the Congressional Black Caucus announced it would oppose the Score Act, a bill standardizing athletes’ contracting rights nationally. “The Congressional Black Caucus cannot support legislation benefiting major athletic institutions that continue to remain silent while Black voting rights and Black political power are being systematically dismantled across the South,” the CBC said in a statement.

Over the weekend, thousands gathered in Montgomery, Alabama, for “All Roads Lead to the South,” a rally promoting voting rights. Multiple speakers called for mass protests and economic boycotts, historically successful strategies for securing voting rights.