A major civil rights organization has launched a new initiative targeting college athletics programs across the South in response to what it describes as efforts to diminish Black voting power.
The nation’s oldest civil rights advocacy group announced its “Out of Bounds” initiative on Tuesday, encouraging Black student-athletes, their families, former students and supporters to “withhold athletic and financial support” from major state universities located in areas that “have moved to limit, weaken or erase Black voting representation.”
Should Black student-athletes join this movement, it would significantly impact team rosters for dominant football and basketball programs throughout the Southeastern Conference and Atlantic Coast Conference.
The civil rights organization joins other groups responding to widespread redistricting efforts following a Supreme Court decision that reduced an important section of the Voting Right Act of 1965.
This initiative emerges as civil rights advocates have organized throughout the South to challenge redistricting proposals from Republican state legislatures that remove majority-Black congressional districts following the Supreme Court’s decision. Advocates have sought various methods to discourage GOP-controlled states from implementing these redistricting maps, including organizing large-scale demonstrations and economic boycotts.
“Across the South, Black athletes have helped build some of the most profitable college athletic programs in America,” stated the organization’s President Derrick Johnson. Johnson emphasized that these programs “generate hundreds of millions of dollars in annual revenue, national television value, alumni donations, merchandising sales, ticket sales, and brand equity — much of it powered by Black football and basketball talent.”
The campaign specifically targets Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, Texas and South Carolina as states for boycott action, contending that athletic programs at these states’ primary universities depend heavily on Black athletic talent and should defend Black political interests.
“Black athletes should not be asked to generate wealth, prestige, and power for state institutions while those same states strip political power from Black communities,” Johnson stated.
Black congressional representatives are also pressuring athletic conferences to take action against Republican-controlled states that might redistrict longtime Black congressional members.
The Congressional Black Caucus sent correspondence on Monday to commissioners of the SEC and ACC athletic conferences, along with the organization’s President Charlie Baker, stating that its members will reject the SCORE Act, legislation to standardize athletes’ contracting rights nationwide, unless conference leadership opposes GOP-led redistricting initiatives in states with major conference participants.
“The Congressional Black Caucus believes institutions that profit from Black talent and Black communities have a responsibility to stand with those communities when their fundamental rights are under attack,” the organization stated Monday. “Silence in the face of injustice is not neutrality — it is complicity.”
