{"id":211186,"date":"2026-05-20T07:55:59","date_gmt":"2026-05-20T07:55:59","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/naacp-calls-for-black-student-athletes-to-boycott-southern-schools-amid-redistricting-backlash-nbc-news\/"},"modified":"2026-05-20T07:55:59","modified_gmt":"2026-05-20T07:55:59","slug":"naacp-calls-for-black-student-athletes-to-boycott-southern-schools-amid-redistricting-backlash-nbc-news","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/naacp-calls-for-black-student-athletes-to-boycott-southern-schools-amid-redistricting-backlash-nbc-news\/","title":{"rendered":"NAACP calls for Black student-athletes to boycott Southern schools amid redistricting backlash – NBC News"},"content":{"rendered":"

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The NAACP launched a campaign Tuesday calling on Black student-athletes to boycott Southern colleges in the wake of a Supreme Court decision<\/a> last month that weakened the Voting Rights Act, leading to the dismantling of one majority-Black congressional district<\/a> and a push to scrap others.
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\u201cThe 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,\u201d 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 <\/a>primarily in the NCAA\u2019s 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<\/a>, including the University of Alabama, the University of Texas at Austin, the University of Georgia and the University of Mississippi.
The \u201cOut of Bounds\u201d 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\u2019s 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 \u201cunconstitutional racial gerrymander.\u201d
The decision is already having ripple effects throughout the South. Within days, the Tennessee Legislature divided up the state\u2019s 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<\/a> in the newly redrawn 9th Congressional District, saying the new maps \u201csilenced the Black vote here in Memphis.\u201d State senators in Louisiana have also passed legislation that would result in the loss of one of the state\u2019s two majority-minority districts<\/a>.
Republicans have praised the Supreme Court ruling ahead of this year\u2019s midterms. But the Callais decision, as it\u2019s 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<\/a> 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 \u201ctargeted programs\u201d 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\u2019s demands is the adoption of state-level voting rights acts.
Reaction to the NAACP\u2019s 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.
\u201cWe 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,\u201d 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\u2019s football team, which won back-to-back national titles in 2021 and 2022.
\u201cI think we all have a role to play, and I\u2019m committed to doing my part,\u201d he replied.
\u201cI love this country,\u201d he added. \u201cI\u2019m willing to take my chances at the end of the day with the people, with democracy, and so you know that\u2019s what I\u2019m deeply committed to.\u201d
South Carolina Attorney General Alan Wilson, a Republican who is running for governor, criticized the campaign on X.
\u201cStudent athletes should not be used by the NAACP for political gain because they disagree with a Supreme Court ruling,\u201d he wrote. \u201cThat\u2019s wrong, and South Carolina will not be bullied into ignoring the Constitution.\u201d
Before the campaign\u2019s launch, people were already debating online about how much, if any, of the burden in responding to the states\u2019 redistricting efforts should fall on Black athletes. Supporters have argued that any actions that put universities\u2019 financial windfalls from athletics in jeopardy could be enough to move the needle.
\u201cIf 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,\u201d comedian D.L. Hughley said in a recent interview<\/a> with The Tennessee Holler.
Almost all of the universities listed by the NAACP are SEC schools. A spokesperson for the SEC didn\u2019t 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<\/a> that Mississippi, which has two conference member schools, was at risk of not being able to host championships if it didn\u2019t 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<\/a>, which legislators agreed to that summer.
Bracey Harris is a national reporter for NBC News, based in Jackson, Mississippi.
© 2026 NBCUniversal Media, LLC<\/p>\n

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news AlertsThere are no new alerts at this timeThe 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.Subscribe to read […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":211187,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-211186","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-us","8":"entry"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/211186","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=211186"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/211186\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/211187"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=211186"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=211186"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=211186"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}