NAACP urges Black student-athletes to boycott Southern schools after Voting Rights Act decision

The NAACP launched a campaign Tuesday calling on Black student-athletes to boycott Southern colleges in the wake of a Supreme Court decision last month that weakened the Voting Rights Act, leading to the dismantling of one majority-Black congressional district and a push to scrap others.

“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,” NAACP National President and CEO Derrick Johnson said in a statement.

The group is urging Black recruits to withhold their commitments from a list of universities primarily in the NCAA’s Southeastern Conference. The schools are in the following states: Tennessee, Louisiana, Alabama, Florida, Mississippi, South Carolina, Texas and Georgia. Several of the schools have nationally ranked football programs, including the University of Alabama, the University of Texas at Austin, the University of Georgia and the University of Mississippi.

The “Out of Bounds” campaign comes as voting rights advocates across generations are grappling with what they see as the latest blow to one of the most seminal victories of the nation’s Civil Rights Movement. The Voting Rights Act was enacted in 1965 to protect minority voters who long faced discrimination in elections. Last month, in a 6-3 ruling, the Supreme Court held that using race to draw two majority-Black districts in Louisiana was an “unconstitutional racial gerrymander.”

The decision is already having ripple effects throughout the South. Within days, the Tennessee Legislature divided up the state’s sole majority-Black and Democratically held congressional district across three Republican electoral districts. Rep. Steve Cohen, a veteran Tennessee Democratic lawmaker, subsequently announced he was no longer running for re-election in the newly redrawn 9th Congressional District, saying the new maps “silenced the Black vote here in Memphis.” State senators in Louisiana have also passed legislation that would result in the loss of one of the state’s two majority-minority districts.

Republicans have praised the Supreme Court ruling ahead of this year’s midterms. But the Callais decision, as it’s known, has set off a wave of backlash in the Southeast, where communities with histories of discrimination at the polls once had to seek pre-clearance from the federal government before they changed their voting laws or created new electoral maps. Over the weekend, thousands gathered in Alabama to protest the decision in Montgomery and at the historic Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma.

During the Civil Rights Movement, universities in Mississippi, Alabama and Georgia were the scenes of some of the fiercest and most violent resistance to integration. Today, many of their athletic programs have diverse rosters.

The NAACP has said fans and alumni of “targeted programs” should redirect their financial support to historically Black colleges and universities, or HBCUs. The organization has also encouraged recruits to visit those campuses.

Among the NAACP’s demands is the adoption of state-level voting rights acts.

Reaction to the NAACP’s campaign was swift Tuesday.

At a news conference held by the Congressional Black Caucus, House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, D-N.Y., mentioned the previous stances taken by iconic Black sports figures like Jackie Robinson, Bill Russell and Muhammad Ali.

“We will continue to stand with the NAACP in encouraging athletes in our community to look elsewhere until these racially gerrymandered maps in the South are reversed, buried in the ground never to rise again,” Jeffries said.

During a panel at a conference in Washington, D.C., hosted by the Center for American Progress, a progressive think tank, MS Now host Symone Sanders asked Sen. Raphael Warnock, D-Ga., about the campaign and whether he believed administrators and even athletes at Southern colleges and universities had an obligation to speak out about the Supreme Court decision. Warnock has praised the dominance of the University of Georgia’s football team, which won back-to-back national titles in 2021 and 2022.

“I think we all have a role to play, and I’m committed to doing my part,” he replied.

“I love this country,” he added. “I’m willing to take my chances at the end of the day with the people, with democracy, and so you know that’s what I’m deeply committed to.”

South Carolina Attorney General Alan Wilson, a Republican who is running for governor, criticized the campaign on X.

“Student athletes should not be used by the NAACP for political gain because they disagree with a Supreme Court ruling,” he wrote. “That’s wrong, and South Carolina will not be bullied into ignoring the Constitution.”

Before the campaign’s launch, people were already debating online about how much, if any, of the burden in responding to the states’ redistricting efforts should fall on Black athletes. Supporters have argued that any actions that put universities’ financial windfalls from athletics in jeopardy could be enough to move the needle.

“If athletes stop going to the Tennessees and the Louisianas, the top-tier athletes, ESPN and the presidents of schools, chambers of commerce would start having conversations,” comedian D.L. Hughley said in a recent interview with The Tennessee Holler.

Almost all of the universities listed by the NAACP are SEC schools. A spokesperson for the SEC didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.

The conference has spoken up about racial justice issues in the past. In 2020, Commissioner Greg Sankey warned that Mississippi, which has two conference member schools, was at risk of not being able to host championships if it didn’t change its state flag, which included the Confederate battle emblem.

Athletic and university leaders across the state also gathered at the Mississippi Capitol in support of a new flag, which legislators agreed to that summer.

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