NAACP To Boycott Southern schools Over Voting Rights

“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.”

NAACP president Derrick Johnson argued that Black athletes have become the economic backbone of many elite college football and basketball programs, generating billions through television contracts, ticket sales and merchandising while Black communities simultaneously face political disenfranchisement. Johnson said athletes should not continue enriching institutions connected to states accused of diminishing Black voting power.  

“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 asks prospective athletes and their families to avoid committing to universities in those states, while also encouraging current players to use their public platforms to advocate for fair voting maps. Supporters are also being urged to redirect donations and financial support away from major athletic programs and toward historically Black colleges and universities, or HBCUs.  

The boycott effort follows the recent Supreme Court case Louisiana v. Callais, which critics say weakened key protections of the Voting Rights Act and opened the door for Republican-led legislatures to redraw congressional maps in ways that reduce Black representation. Civil rights groups across the South have responded with protests, organizing campaigns and calls for economic pressure.