NAACP urges boycott of college sports in south over voting rights

The NAACP on Tuesday launched a campaign urging Black athletes, their families, alumni and fans to boycott athletic programs of public universities in states that “have moved to limit, weaken or erase Black voting representation”. In the announcement of the “Out of Bounds” campaign, the civil rights giant name-checked eight states – Tennessee, Louisiana, Alabama, Florida, Mississippi, South Carolina, Texas and Georgia – whose flagship public athletic programs generate more than $100m in annual revenue. Each of those states has moved to draw new maps to limit Black voting representation, following the supreme court’s Louisiana v Callais decision severely weakening 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 who are currently being actively recruited by targeted programs to withhold their commitments until the states “restore fair congressional maps and meaningful Black representation,” to ask coaches and athletic directors at targeted programs where their universities stand on voting rights and to visit and seriously consider committing to athletic programs at …