The NAACP Florida State Conference, meeting in Orlando on March 18, unanimously voted to ask its parent organization to issue a travel advisory for the state because of its ongoing efforts to, among other things, whitewash or erase African American history and eliminate diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) programs.

“We are an organization that protects people’s civil rights and this is a first step to doing that,” Hillsborough County NAACP President Yvette Lewis said, the Tampa Bay Times reported. “People are seeing what’s happening in Fla.. They’re paying attention and I hope that help is coming. … When slaves tried to educate themselves, they were beaten. When they tried to learn to read, they were killed for having books.”

The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People will discuss the plea for help when it meets in May. The country’s oldest civil rights organization was founded 114 years ago with the mission: "To ensure the political, educational, social, and economic equality of rights of all persons and to eliminate racial hatred and racial discrimination." There are purveyors of “racial hatred and racial discrimination” today and they must be challenged just as happened with those who once wore hoods and burned crosses.

The request for a “travel advisory” is most likely a call for a boycott and the NAACP has a history of such campaigns. It launched one in 1999, lasting 15 years, against South Carolina for flying the confederate flag on its capitol grounds. Another in 2017 protested a Missouri law which the state NAACP said allowed for “legal discrimination.” Fla.’s Gov. Ronald Dion DeSantis, noted for being tone deaf to critics, quickly mocked the call for action against his state, saying, according to The Sarasota Herald Tribune, "What a joke. What a joke. Yeah, we’ll see how effective that is. Our country, you know, it goes through all these – we get involved in these stupid fights. This is a stunt to try to do that. It’s a pure stunt and fine if you want to waste your time on a stunt, that’s fine. Look, I mean, I’m not wasting my time on your stunts. OK. I’m gonna make sure that we’re getting good things done here. And we’re gonna continue to make this state a great state."

A “great state” for whom is at the center of the complaint. Will a boycott of, say, the vital tourism, ensure repeal of Afrophobic laws recently passed and prevent others from being enacted? That is hardly likely. Fla. earns around $100 billion annually from more than 130 million visitors and it would take a really massive campaign to even dent those numbers. But a boycott could focus national attention on the discriminatory policies which DeSantis and Fla.’s Republican-controlled Legislature have been writing into law.

That happened after Miami attorney H.T. Smith and his Black Lawyers Association colleagues launched a tourism boycott of Greater Miami on July 17, 1990, that lasted three years, to protest the snubbing of Nelson Mandela’s visit to the area which was seen as symbolic of the authorities’ attitude towards African Americans. The so-called 1,000-day “Quiet Riot” cost the local industry $50 million — only about 0.25 percent of the annual $20.4 billion tourism revenue. But the potential damage to Miami’s image was strong enough to force the powersthat-be to the negotiation table.

The DeSantis crowd are nothing like the Miami tourism honchos and, anyhow, the governor’s motto is “never back down.” But the NAACP can cause some economic pain by mobilizing a substantial part of the nation’s 40 million African Americans and their many influential organizations and individuals and allies. Those include numerous churches, sororities and fraternities, media such as American Urban Radio Network and sports and celebrity superstars. Others, too, must be outraged at DeSantis’ quip about “joke” and “stunt” on such a serious topic.

The NAACP will likely find other allies. The Rev. R.B. Holmes, one of Florida’s leading pastors, has called for a national conference in Jacksonville of faith leaders, Greek letter organizations, parents and community members. The purpose will be to draft a "blueprint to defeat Governor DeSantis’ reactionary, regressive and racist policies to destroy diversity, equity, and inclusion programs in the state of Florida," The Tallahassee Democrat reported. A tourism boycott should be worked into that conference agenda.

Also, Holmes’ call came as students from several universities demonstrated at Florida A&M University (FAMU). Adding insult to injury, the boards of the State University System and individual schools chose the state’s leading African American university to hold a meeting to discuss scuttling or diluting programs of importance to African Americans. The students held a protest march, organized partly by Students for a Democratic Society, which has chapters across Fla.. About 10 students entered the meeting venue and “sat in silence with their fists held up high in solidarity as the meetings proceeded,” The Tallahassee Democrat reported. “We’re not in a battle. We’re in a war,” United Faculty of Florida president Andrew Gothard told the students before the rally began. “This didn’t start yesterday and it’s not going to end tomorrow. What do you call attempts to silence the voices of the people? I call it fascism.”

The city commission of Miramar, where African Americans are the largest racial group among the 140,000 residents, unanimously passed a resolution criticizing DeSantis’ policies. “I can’t call the governor racist. I don’t know him personally. I don’t know his heart but what I do know is that the policies that he brings forward, it always seems to attack Black people and people of color,” said Mayor Wayne Messam, who sponsored the resolution. He added, defiantly, “The governor at any time can take actions that can come against our city but we want to show we are not afraid; we will stand up for our residents.”

The Miami-Dade County Black Affairs Advisory Board also passed a unanimous resolution protesting DeSantis’ ridiculing the College Board’s Advance Placement African American History course. “Politics has no place in determining school curriculum,” board chairman Pierre Rutledge said. “If we rely on elected officials to tell our children what they can and cannot learn about, that is the epitome of political indoctrination.”

There are numerous examples of policies which DeSantis and other Republican governors are implementing that adversely affecting African Americans, including the attack on critical race theory and the banning or censoring of books, and the proposed NAACP boycott could spread nationwide. But Florida is a good starting point to say enough is enough.