The Economic Impact of the Visitor Economy

Between direct spending (hotels, food, transport, tickets), indirect effects (supply chain spending by event organizers and venues) and induced effects (spending by employees of those businesses), the eight targeted states are tourism-dependent economies (Tennessee, Louisiana, Alabama, Florida, Mississippi, South Carolina, Texas, and Georgia). This industry generates hundreds of billions of dollars annually in direct spending, with large national conferences routinely producing tens of millions of dollars in local economic impact and reducing household tax burdens across the states. Tourism and related events rank among the top four industries in six of the eight states and as the single largest industry in South Carolina, ranking above manufacturing, finance and agriculture (Dean Runyan Associates, “Economic Impact of Travel in South Carolina,” 2024). In Mississippi, tourism contributes an estimated $18.1 billion to the economy, roughly 14–15 percent of the state’s gross domestic product and, by Senator Roger Wicker‘s own designation, the state’s fourth-largest industry. Each household in Mississippi would need to be taxed an additional $1,015 to replace the visitor-generated taxes received by state and local governments in 2024.

A large segment of this economy is driven by Black and other diverse-led professional associations, civil rights organizations, Greek-letter fraternities and sororities, and cultural festivals. These gatherings represent hundreds of millions of dollars in discretionary, movable economic activity, spending that host cities actively compete to attract, and that can be redirected when the political climate is unwelcoming.

Some have modest individual impact, such as family reunions. Others stand out in their impact:

The Essence Fest has become one of the most economically significant cultural events in the South. Since 2022, the festival has produced nearly $1 billion in cumulative economic impact for Louisiana. Attendees spend an average of $3,135 per visit. In 2024, it generated $346.3 million for the New Orleans economy, creating 2,642 jobs and $113.7 million in income for local workers.

The NAACP’s annual national convention is a consistent economic driver for its host cities, typically drawing 8,000 to 11,000 attendees and generating approximately $10–$12.5 million in direct economic activity per event.

The Divine Nine convention ecosystem generates hundreds of millions of dollars per biennial cycle. Alpha Kappa Alpha’s (AKA) national boulé, for instance, generated nearly $60 million for Atlanta in a single week in 2016. AKA organizes its roughly 350,000 members into regions, each holding its own annual conference drawing between 4,000 and 8,000 attendees and generating approximately $40 to $60 million per year in aggregate.

The U.S. Hispanic Chamber of Commerce National Conference, the largest gathering of its kind, draws approximately 1,500 to 2,000 attendees annually.

The question of where and with whom to do business has always been a political question for civil rights organizations (What has changed is that general counsels and operations directors now need contractual language to match that reality). Institutional decisions about operational footprint are inseparable from institutional values.

Organizers of Black festivals and cultural events have already demonstrated they can act collectively to redirect their economic impact.

For instance, in 2023, Alpha Phi Alpha Fraternity withdrew its national convention from Orlando, Florida, denouncing the state’s hostile policy environment and forgoing nearly $4.6 million in direct economic impact. Visit Lauderdale estimated more than $20 million in lost revenue as a result of convention cancellations by Black organizations, with the economic impact expected to be felt over a three-year period. (Miami Times, Aug. 2023)

As General Counsel at the National Urban League, I saw firsthand how organizations increasingly evaluate human rights climate as part of operational decision-making. Part of my responsibility involved providing contractual flexibility to align those mission-related goals with business objectives. In practice, this flexibility typically takes the form of venue selection clauses that reserve the right to relocate events based on material changes in the host jurisdiction’s legal or policy environment, including changes to voting rights protections or anti-discrimination law. Some organizations negotiate explicit human rights climate provisions; others rely on broader force majeure or changed-circumstances language that achieves the same result without naming specific political triggers. This flexibility may be embedded in governance structures, contractual frameworks, or institutional policy. The cost of negotiating this flexibility upfront is a fraction of the reputational and operational cost of being contractually locked into a politically untenable venue.

The long-term significance of these campaigns may outlast short-term partisan politics, influencing tourism behavior, conference and event bookings, and talent recruitment over several years.

Conclusion

Taken together, the eight states targeted by Out of Bounds host one of the most economically significant concentrations of Black organizational spending in the country. The spending is discretionary and movable. Whether or not the campaign directly changes redistricting policy, it reflects a broader shift in civil rights advocacy toward integrating political representation, economic participation, institutional legitimacy, and reputational risk into a unified strategic framework. In that sense, it may ultimately prove more influential as a political framing mechanism than as a conventional boycott alone. The framing is one that state legislatures are likely to take seriously as a matter of long-term economic governance, regardless of their position on the underlying voting-rights litigation.

What’s Driving the Campaign?

On April 29, 2026, the Supreme Court issued its 6–3 decision in Louisiana v. Callais along ideological lines, establishing a more stringent standard for challenging redistricting maps under Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act of 1965.[2] The ruling intensified debate over midcycle congressional redistricting and the extent to which such maps dilute minority voting strength. Civil rights advocates argued that Callais would embolden states to engage in a practice known as cracking and packing. (CBC Amicus Brief, Sept. 3, 2025). The targeted states have already moved to redraw congressional maps. Tennessee’s redistricting dismantled the state’s only district in which Black voters exercised substantial electoral influence. Florida has moved to eliminate the Fair Districts Amendments banning partisan gerrymandering. Across the South, legislatures could target as many as 19 majority-minority districts to skew the political process to favor one party. In 2023, the Supreme Court ruled 5-4 that Alabama’s 2021 congressional map violated Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act by diluting Black voting power. In a dramatic reversal just days ago, the Supreme Court issued a shadow docket order allowing the state of Alabama to use a contested 2023 map for the upcoming 2026 elections. These developments form a backdrop against which the Civil Rights community has concluded that legal channels alone are insufficient.

The campaign reflects the broader evolution of civil rights strategy toward finding economic and institutional pressure points to achieve political or policy goals. From the Montgomery Bus Boycott to the Memphis Sanitation Workers’ Strike of 1968, the civil rights movement has always appreciated the impact of economic leverage in the fight for political equality. Economic pressure has been deployed alongside legal advocacy, political organizing, and coalition building.

Out of Bounds falls within that continuum.

What’s At Stake?

The campaign reflects a “taxation without representation” framing that resonates across the political spectrum. It reflects a wider critique that institutions and governments should not extract economic value from communities whose political influence is simultaneously being eroded. Legislation that creates barriers to voting rights has been enacted or proposed in at least 47 states, with a disproportionate impact on people of color, young people, and the elderly. But those constituencies still pay taxes. Black political power has a mitigating effect on redistribution of their tax dollars and tends to produce policy frameworks that create opportunity for other marginalized groups.

“Out of Black political power we have seen the policy frameworks that have created opportunity for Black people, for other people of color, and for anyone who has been marginalized in this country.” — Patrice Willoughby, NAACP, May 2026

Where Black communities hold political power, public investment follows for everyone. Research on congressional districts in counties with very high levels of Black population and a Black representative found that they receive approximately eight more federal projects than comparable, white-represented districts, a gap that compounds over time into material differences in economic opportunity.

The Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies has documented how that dynamic plays out in practice. Its research on the Black Rural South found that 38 percent of African American residents lack home internet access, nearly double the rate for white residents in the same region. The $42.5 billion Broadband Equity, Access, and Deployment program was designed to address this disparity. Built with South Carolina’s Jim Clyburn (SC-6) as a leading architect to reach the communities most persistently left behind, BEAD is the largest single federal investment in internet infrastructure in US history. The Joint Center’s more recent scholarship tells the next chapter: with non-deployment funds suspended and broader infrastructure funding dispersed slowly or paused, the most underconnected communities now face the highest risk of being left out entirely.

From the campaign’s perspective, political representation is not abstract: it determines who gets the broadband grant, the workforce pipeline, the infrastructure investment.

How Out of Bounds Differs and Why This Presents Challenges

Out of Bounds is a hybrid of consumer boycotts, protest movements, and labor strikes. It draws on a tradition of athlete-led political action with deep roots in the civil rights movement such as the 1968 Olympic Project for Human Rights or Colin Kaepernick’s national anthem protest. Rather than calling for a broad economic withdrawal from the South, which would dilute pressure and burden everyday communities that depend on commerce, the campaign’s organizers and supporters — including the NAACP, CBC, and NBPC — have identified a specific pressure point: flagship university athletic programs.

Challenges and Potential Next Steps

For the target states, these types of campaigns can generate several forms of indirect pressure, shaping public opinion, nationalizing state voting-rights fights and keeping the issues in public conversation. They can also serve to increase Black voter mobilization and raise the political cost of gerrymandering for other states. But the strategy has some risks.

Today’s fragmented and polarized media environment complicates matters and makes public opinion a less reliable instrument. The press is more siloed and partisan than in earlier eras, and the news cycle is resistant to the prolonged national attention that characterized campaigns like the Memphis strike. Some politicians may even benefit politically from conflict with civil rights organizations despite delivering little for their supporters beyond legislation centered on cultural grievance politics.

The campaign relies on triangular pressure since the institutions being targeted are not responsible for redistricting decisions. The causal chain between athletic pressure and legislative behavior is therefore longer and less predictable than in a traditional boycott. Each link in that chain introduces more points of friction and uncertainty.

There’s also a significant collective-action problem since individual Black athletes would have to make meaningful personal sacrifices, but the political gains will benefit a much broader community. This is a classic free-rider dynamic that typically undermines campaigns lacking sufficient organizational infrastructure.

Organizers of the Montgomery Bus Boycott overcame these dynamics by providing transportation alternatives, fundraising infrastructure, legal coordination, and communication networks. Out of Bounds would likely require a similar infrastructure to sustain a prolonged campaign.

Given these structural constraints, the campaign’s long-term impact will likely depend on whether it becomes part of a broader coordinated strategy extending well beyond college athletics. The economic leverage available to Black organizations and civil rights institutions in the targeted states is substantial. Part II of this assessment examines that landscape.

[1]U.S. News & World Report, “NAACP Urges Black Athletes, Fans to Boycott Southern US Universities Over Voting Rights,” May 19, 2026. https://www.usnews.com/news/politics/articles/2026-05-19/naacp-urges-black-athletes-fans-to-boycott-southern-us-universities-over-voting-rights

[2]Louisiana v. Callais, No. 24–109 (U.S. Apr. 29, 2026).