Harry Edwards warns NAACP boycott lacks movement

Dr. Harry Edwards, the veteran sports sociologist and civil-rights organizer, said the NAACP’s call for Black high school athletes to boycott universities in states rolling back voting rights faces a harder problem than scheduling or messaging: it lacks the ki

On May 27, 2026, Dr. Harry Edwards—an 83-year-old sociologist and longtime organizer of Black athletes—was asked to weigh in on the NAACP’s call, made last week, for Black high school athletes to boycott universities in states gutting voting rights for Black residents.

Edwards did not dismiss the strategy. He said he was “not averse to their proposal. ” but he immediately pressed on the missing pieces—the historical scaffolding. the political ecosystem. and the movement that would have to carry an athlete boycott from the field into the country’s political bloodstream.

The NAACP’s campaign came in the wake of a Supreme Court decision that “gutted” the Voting Rights Act. followed quickly by state efforts to redraw political districts. The article points to Alabama. Florida. Tennessee. Texas. and Louisiana as examples of states that “immediately moved to redraw and eliminate majority-Black districts. ” muting Black political voices.

Edwards said those states share something else besides election maps: a deep institutional attachment to college football. where Black talent is central. He described a contradiction in which these states “deify Black talent. ” “love Black entertainment. ” and “depend upon Black labor. ” while also “demean[ing] and politically silenc[ing] Black people.”.

But for all the moral clarity he attributes to the target, Edwards argued the NAACP still needs a practical, movement-level plan—one that begins with messaging and the political context athletes can rely on.

He said the athletes themselves haven’t yet been heard from. and he expects that many Black athletes “will ignore or be outright opposed to the NAACP” under current conditions—especially if there is not a “Black movement” in broader society strong enough to build political identity. attract popular support. and sustain a fight “over stadium walls and through pavilion turnstiles.”.

Edwards’ core concern is not that athletes can’t speak. It’s what, in his view, will be missing when they do: institutional acceptance, and a broader political vehicle that turns a protest into results rather than isolated disruption.

He acknowledged that organized Black athletes might gain short-term leverage tied to sports economics—potentially driving up NIL (name. image. likeness) prices for participation in conferences such as the SEC and ACC. and potentially sending a message to “two or three states” based on school-by-school targeting.

Yet he also cautioned that schools targeted would likely try to blunt the NAACP effort by using “their former Black student athletes” to speak against it and discourage current athletes from supporting the NAACP.

In Edwards’ telling, the real price would show up “principally” for the activist athletes. “Still,” he said, “whatever the goals, clarity in messaging from the outset is critical.”

To explain why, Edwards drew a line from the present moment back to his own work organizing athlete protest in the late 1960s.

In September 1967. he said he organized a boycott of the University of Texas at El Paso versus San Jose State season-opening football game. Then. in February 1968. he said his group organized a total boycott of the NYAC indoor track and field classic—framing both actions as “message” protests during what he called “the most politically violent five years in America since 1860–1865. ” specifically 1963–1968.

He pointed to the weight of that era—consuming a president, a presidential candidate, Medgar Evers, Malcolm X, Dr. King. and civil rights workers and leaders—before describing what he and others believed the strategy required: “a combination of boycotts and protests. ” with “the strategic need for flexibility and multiple options.”.

Now. Edwards said. the NAACP could be more effective by targeting a small number of schools rather than broad pressure all at once. “It would appear to be more efficacious today for the NAACP to target two or three schools. ” he said. “with the threat of others being singled out for targeting in the NEAR future. ” adding that it may still be possible for the NAACP to “downsize and diversify” the boycott effort in that way.

Still, he returned to his skepticism: he is “still not convinced” the NAACP goals can be achieved without a broader, society-wide Black political movement.

Edwards contrasted today with past eras he said provided the missing political context. He referenced the post–World War II civil rights movement as the kind of environment that made room for Major League Baseball’s “Great Experiment. ” Jackie Robinson. desegregation in professional football and basketball. and Wilma Rudolph’s post-1960 Olympics desegregation efforts. He then pointed to the late 1960s Black Power movement. mentioning the Muhammad Ali Cleveland Summit. Tommie Smith and John Carlos. and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar.

He also referenced the Black Lives Matter movement—mentioning Ariyana Smith and Colin Kaepernick—and argued it helped provide a new stage for athlete-led politics. He tied that period’s momentum to cultural shifts such as the rise of women’s sports alongside Roe v. Wade, Title IX, and the #MeToo movement.

In Edwards’ view, the NAACP has not, “to my knowledge,” discussed how to embed an athlete boycott within a broader popular movement that could provide framing and support.

His history lessons also include an insistence that athletes—especially women—often start the protests that later spread.

Edwards cited multiple examples: In 1959, Rose Robinson at the Chicago Pan Am games protested racial segregation by “sit[ting] on an ice cooler during the playing of the national anthem,” describing it as nearly 10 years before Smith and Carlos raised their fists at the 1968 Olympics.

After the 1960 Rome Olympics. Edwards said Wilma Rudolph refused to participate in racially segregated parades and dinners celebrating her three gold medal performances. and then worked to desegregate her hometown of Clarksville. Tennessee. He also added that Ali did not become outspoken on racism until after his defeat of Sonny Liston in 1964.

Edwards then pointed to a more recent moment he said foreshadowed the later visibility of athlete protests: in 2014. he said Knox College basketball player Ariyana Smith lay on the gym floor for four minutes and 20 seconds during the national anthem and colors in Staten. Missouri—about 12 miles from Ferguson—commemorating police blocking the family of Mike Brown for four hours and 20 minutes from retrieving his body from the street where he was killed by a white police officer.

In July 2020. Edwards cited women from the Atlanta Dream of the WNBA mobilizing to drive out a member of their team ownership. describing that owner as also a US senator who “spoke derisively” and condemned the Black Lives Matter movement. Edwards said that campaign helped lead to the election of two Democrat senators to the US Congress from Georgia for the first time since the era of the Dixiecrats.

Edwards summarized his view with a stark warning about leadership: he said sports can mirror society, but it often won’t deliver a Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.-type spark on cue. “Rather,” he said, “look for the next Claudette Colvin or Rosa Parks—if history is any guide, she is already on her way.”

That point becomes, in his telling, a test of whether the NAACP boycott plan is inclusive enough to match sports’ real history.

He asked whether the proposed boycott includes women’s collegiate sports or only revenue-producing men’s collegiate sports. If it excludes women. he said. it would “deny the relevance of both women’s sports” and the “historic role-potential of women athletes” in igniting protest movements both in sports and in society.

He argued that. before athletes are asked to sacrifice. “a great deal of strategic analyses and a lot of groundwork must be done” regarding the NAACP’s proposed boycott of collegiate sports. He also said Black athletes—male or female—should not be asked to squander their hard-won power resources because of insufficient planning.

Edwards’ remarks folded back into the present political climate as well. The article describes what it calls a “red-alert. wake-the-fuck-up. moment” in the face of multiple pressures. including “Trump” attempting to distribute his $1.776 billion slush fund. and “10. 000 white South Africans” being given US citizenship while “hundreds of thousands of people waiting for green cards” are being told to leave the country.

It also ties that domestic immigration fight to an assessment that “Black voting rights are being eradicated,” framing the boycott conversation as part of a larger struggle against white supremacist violence.

In that context, Edwards said a boycott could have “an incredibly positive effect”—but he cautioned that waking up is not enough. “We have to organize ‘over the stadium walls and through the pavilion turnstiles’ to actually see results.”

He closed with an older warning of his own, quoting remarks he made in 1968: “Activism divorced from thorough strategic analyses is conducive to nothing so much as contradiction, chaos and ultimately failure.”

NAACP Harry Edwards Voting Rights Act gerrymandering athlete boycott Black athletes NIL college football political movement sports sociology civil rights