The NAACP recently launched the “Out of Bounds” campaign, a national call for Black athletes, families, fans, alumni, and consumers to withhold athletic and financial support from public universities in Tennessee, Louisiana, Alabama, Florida, Mississippi, South Carolina, Texas, and Georgia.
According to the association, these eight states have moved to limit, weaken, or erase Black voting representation in the wake of the U.S. Supreme Court’s 6-3 ruling in Louisiana v. Callais. At the same time, their flagship public athletic programs continue to recruit Black athletes. These public universities collectively generate billions of dollars in annual athletic revenue.
“What these states have done is not a policy disagreement. It is a sprint to erase Black political power,” said Derrick Johnson, president and CEO of the NAACP. “These actions happened in days, in some cases in hours, of a Supreme Court ruling that gives extremist lawmakers a playbook to erode Black representation. 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. Out of Bounds is our answer: we are naming the contradiction, and we are calling on Black athletes, families, fans, and consumers to act on it. The same power that built these programs can be redirected. And it will be.”
The “Out of Bounds” campaign calls on Black athletes and recruits to withhold their commitments from targeted programs, ask their coaches and athletics directors where their universities stand on voting rights, and to consider attending a historically Black college or university. For current college athletes attending schools in the aforementioned states, the NAACP asks students to use their platform to elevate the issue, ask institutional leadership for public statements opposing racial vote dilution, and to consider all available options under the transfer portal. The campaign also calls on fans, alumni, donors, and consumers to withhold their financial support and redirect that spending to HBCUs’ athletics programs, scholarship funds, NIL collectives, bands, and alumni foundations.
“This generation of Black athletes understands something that those who came before them were never afforded the chance to say so plainly: your talent is yours, and so is your community’s political power,” said Tylik McMillan, national director of the NAACP’s youth and college division. “These are not separate issues. 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. 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.”
Al Tony Gilmore, a Distinguished Historian Emeritus of the National Education Association who has served as a historian at Howard University, University of Maryland, College Park and George Washington University, told JBHE: “No one should argue or deny that the NAACP’s goal is not a noble one. But it is unrealistic to expect these young men and women to become potential martyrs for the cause. The soul searching question coming from all of this quagmire is: Should athletically talented young Black men and women be expected to more or less risk NIL monies, confirmed booster financed stipends, endorsements, team relationships and preferred coaches as their contribution to the NAACP’s boycott, whose strategy they had no part in planning or developing, but are expected to implement?”
The NAACP vows that the Out of Bonds campaign will remain in effect until targeted states adopt state-level voting rights protections, repeal maps that dilute Black voting power, restore congressional and judicial districts that reflect the Black population’s actual strength, and commit to transparent and community-centered redistricting processes.
