Charles Barkley pledges $1M to black Alabama women for business startups

Former NBA All-Star Charles Barkley has announced he’s pledging $1 million to fund IT startups run by black women in Alabama following the Democratic victory in the state’s Senate election.

“I’m announcing right now, I am pledging $1 million to black women in Alabama to start I.T. startups,” Barkley said on TNT’s “Inside the NBA” on Thursday. “Black women really came out and supported Doug Jones.”

“That does not mean restaurants and hair salons, black women,” Barkley said.

The basketball Hall of Famer and Alabama native’s announcement follows his campaigning for Jones, who defeated Republican Roy Moore in the election Tuesday.

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Barkley appeared at a rally for Jones on Monday, calling on Alabama voters to “stop looking like idiots” and reject Moore, who has been accused of sexual misconduct by multiple women.

“When people in your own party say they won’t vote for you or support you, that’s a dead giveaway. It’s amazing,” Barkley, who played college basketball at Auburn University, told the crowd in Birmingham. “I am begging and urging everybody to get out, call all your friends. We’ve got to, at some point, we’ve got stop looking like idiots to the nation.”

Barkley celebrated Jones’s victory Tuesday night, telling CNN after the race was called that he was “so proud” of Alabama.

“I’m so proud of my state. I love my state. We got some amazing people here. Yeah, we got a bunch of rednecks and a bunch of ignorant people, but we got some amazing people here and they rose up today,” Barkley said.

The former NBA star also criticized the Democratic Party after the election, saying they’ve taken support from black voters and poor voters for granted “for a long time.”

“It’s time for them to get off their ass and start making life better for black folks and people who are poor,” Barkley said.