NAACP calls for boycott of Southern college sports programs over voting rights
WASHINGTON (AP) — The NAACP is calling on Black athletes and fans to boycott public university athletic programs in states that are taking steps that the nation’s oldest civil rights group says are taking action. Restricting black voting rights.
The “Deported” campaign, launched Tuesday, calls on potential Black athletes, their families, alumni and fans to “withhold athletic and financial support” from major public universities in states that “take action to limit, undermine or erase Black voting representation.”
Powerful football and basketball programs in the Southeastern Conference and Atlantic Coast Conference could be depleted if black athletes join the boycott.
The NAACP is among the groups responding to the wave of gerrymandering that emerged in the wake of a disaster. WESupreme Court decision This won a key provision of the Voting Rights Act of 1965.
The boycott came as civil rights activists did Mobilized across the South To protest Republican state legislatures’ redistricting plans that eliminated majority-Black congressional districts after the supreme court’s decision. Activists have sought pressure points to dissuade GOP-led states from redistributing the maps, including calls for mass protests and economic boycotts.
“Black athletes across the South helped create 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, merchandise sales, ticket sales and brand value, much of which is powered by Black football and basketball talent.”
The NAACP’s campaign calls for a boycott of the states of Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, Texas, and South Carolina, arguing that the athletic programs of those states’ flagship universities are particularly dependent on Black athletic talent and must protect Black political interests.
“Black athletes should not be asked to create wealth, prestige and power for state institutions while those same states strip black communities of political power,” Johnson said.
The timing of the initiative comes at a moment in the university’s athletic calendar that could make it difficult for it to make an immediate impact. Transfer portals for high-profile Division I sports football and basketball are all closed through 2027.
There may be an opportunity to impress prominent high school students still weighing their college prospects for fall 2027 and beyond. While many schools have received non-binding verbal agreements from football and basketball players, those agreements won’t become official until late fall at the earliest.
The signing period for basketball opens in mid-November, about a week after the midterm elections, and the 72-hour early signing period for football comes the first week of December.
There is a possibility that new members may try to put pressure on key institutions in the targeted states by threatening to sign elsewhere. But the reality is that these schools have very tight budgets, and asking a teenager to include politics in a decision that could create a life-changing financial windfall before they are even old enough to vote may be weak.
Black lawmakers are also pressuring athletic leagues to take action against Republican-led states that could redistrict longtime Black members of Congress.
The Congressional Black Caucus sent a letter Monday to commissioners of the SEC and ACC athletic conferences and NCAA President Charlie Baker saying 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 that institutions that profit from Black talent and Black communities have a responsibility to stand with those communities when their fundamental rights are under attack,” CBC said in a statement Monday. he said. “Silence in the face of injustice is not impartiality, it is complicity.”
