May 21, 2026
The leading civil rights group is urging Black student-athletes to reconsider playing in Southern states where new congressional maps could be redrawn.
The NAACP is leading the call for Black athletes to boycott Southeastern Conference (SEC) schools as Republican-controlled southern states redraw their voter maps, thus diluting Black voting power following the Supreme Court’s recent decision to gut the Voting Rights Act.
National backlash over voting rights intensified last month following the SCOTUS’ ruling in Louisiana v. Callais, which struck down a map with two majority-Black districts as racial gerrymandering in The Pelican State. As a result, Republican-led states like Alabama and Florida quickly redrew congressional lines, giving GOP congressional candidates an advantage ahead of the 2026 midterm elections. Voting rights advocates argue that by redrawing political maps, Republicans are eliminating majority-Black districts. In response, the NAACP launched a campaign on Tuesday calling on Black student-athletes to boycott colleges in Southern states where new congressional maps have the potential to be redrawn.
“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,” NAACP National President and CEO Derrick Johnson said in a statement, according to NBC News.
The civil rights organization is urging Black recruits to withhold their commitments from universities primarily in the NCAA’s Southeastern Conference, which includes schools in Tennessee, Louisiana, Alabama, Florida, Mississippi, South Carolina, Texas, and Georgia.
The Supreme Court’s monumental decision in Louisiana v. Callais unleashed a tidal wave throughout the South. Since then, Republican states in the South, all of which have at least one majority-Black district, have been working to reset the maps in their favor. Tennessee, for instance, became the first Southern state to pass a new redistricting map that eliminated a majority-Black district in Memphis. The hastily drawn map is among several working their way through state legislatures across the South that are expected to wipe out districts representing majority-Black areas that overwhelmingly vote for Democratic leaders.
In light of the redistricting backlash, comedian and political commentator D.L. Hughley has also voiced support for an SEC boycott. During an interview with The Tennessee Holler, Hughley urged Black athletes not to support states opening the door for racial gerrymandering, which he described as a new era of Jim Crow.
“I don’t understand why a 4/5-star athlete would go to a school where the state is ushering in a new iteration of Jim Crow,” he said. “If you can’t run in a state, don’t run in a state.”
Hughley called for Black college athletes to boycott SEC programs, citing the conference’s $1.03 billion in revenue, driven by Black football and basketball players.
“If you’re a four- or five-star athlete, you can get NIL money anyway. You don’t need to go there. If it was up to the southern states, they would still be having slave labor, which is what they used athletics for. If athletes stop going to the Tennessee and the Louisiana, the top-tier athletes, ESPN and presidents of schools, chambers of Congress would start having conversations.”
He continued, “Let’s be clear. What they’re doing now is ushering in a new iteration of Jim Crow. It’s kind of cliche to say it, but they’re actually living up to it now. They made the ruling not even a week ago, and you see Louisiana and Tennessee and other states jumping on it. You can’t tell it’s not about race when one group of people thinks that they have the right to tell another group of people the parameters for their vote.”
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