NAACP urges Black athletes, donors to avoid Southern schools amid voting rights fight

“What these states have done is not a policy disagreement. It is a sprint to erase Black political power,” said Derrick Johnson, president of the NAACP.

The NAACP has launched a campaign urging Black athletes, fans, family and alumni to “withhold athletic and financial support” from public universities in states that “have moved to limit, weaken or erase Black voting representation.”

The “Out of Bounds” campaign follows the Supreme Court’s decision that weakened a key provision of the 1965 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 of the NAACP, said in a statement. “These actions happened in days, in some cases in hours, of a Supreme Court ruling that gives extremist lawmakers a playbook to erode Black representation.”

The campaign aims to get student athletes to withhold their commitments to schools in GOP-led states that the organization said are working to dilute Black political power. The campaign asks the student-athletes and fans to consider HBCUs instead, and donors and alumni are implored to stop buying tickets and merchandise.

The NAACP calls out the following GOP-led states — Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, South Carolina, Tennessee, and Texas — and their flagship universities.

“This generation of Black athletes understands something that those who came before them were never afforded the chance to say so plainly: your talent is yours, and so is your community’s political power,” Tylik McMillan, a national director for the NAACP, said in a statement.

“These are not separate issues. 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,” he explained. “We are asking young people — recruits, current athletes, fans — to see that connection clearly and to act on it.”

It’s not the first time the nation’s oldest civil rights organization has called on Black student-athletes to reconsider their commitment to colleges and universities. In 2024, the NAACP encouraged Black student-athletes to avoid Florida’s public schools over the state’s anti-DEI laws.