Black High School Baseball Player Says Crowd Yelled “You Should Have Been George Floyd” And “Get Back To The Fields”

An Iowa school district says the recent banter during a baseball game “crossed the line.”

An online statement released by the school district’s principals, directors, and superintendent informed the public that the only Black baseball player for Charles City High School heard “several bigoted comments yelled from the crowd” when the team played Waverly-Shell Rock High on June 27.

The school district did not reveal the student’s name; however, Jeremiah Chapman came forward in an interview with CNN to recount that day. “You should have been George Floyd” and “Get back to the fields” is what he says he heard people yelling and at one point was even called “Colin,” which he believes was in reference to #ColinKaepernick.

“I try my hardest to have everyone like me because that’s just my personality,” Chapman said. “And it’s just hard seeing that no matter how hard I try, people can’t accept me because of my skin color.”

Iowa chose to resume its high school sports in June. Chapman told CNN he was excited to get back to some normalcy after his junior year was affected by COVID-19. But those awful comments have left him angry and hurt.

Chapman’s mother, Kiesha Cunnings, told CNN she did not attend the June 27 game but was flooded when her son called to tell her about it.

“I was angry because as a parent, this is the one fear I have for him,” she said. “The other part of me was kind of relieved that it did happen because it opened Jeremiah’s eyes to not be so naive and colorblind and ignorant to the fact that things like this still happen.” On the other hand, she doesn’t feel like the people in the stands were trying to be racist.

“I feel like they were being kids and just trying to say whatever they could say to throw him (Jeremiah) off his game and unfortunately, they took it to race,” she said and that may be possible but those comments stepped over the typical competitive banter, you see at any level of sporting. Even if it were kids, this is a different level of disrespect that should only be seen as racism.

Unfortunately, it’s unknown who actually made the comments that day. But the umpire also heard them and asked Chapman did he want to pause the game, however, Chapman declined because he did not want to let his teammates down. He told CNN he didn’t think the umpire cared that much about it, and it meant a lot to him when he asked him.

Sadly, Chapman is not the first player of color to experience racism while playing at away games, Charles City Community School District Superintendent Mike Fisher said. In hopes of combating these incidents, the administration has sent additional staff to travel with varsity teams on road games.

“However we realized even this work has been a Band-Aid,” he stated. “We want to see systemic change and shine a light on this continued disgusting behavior. We wanted to bring the conversation to the forefront and demand that we as a society do better. We want to make sure that all of our students of color know that we have their backs privately and publicly.”

The opposing team’s school district, Waverly-Shell also released a statement saying the comments from the stands were unacceptable and followed up with an apology post on its Facebook account.

“We make no excuses because there are none,” Waverly-Shell Rock Community School District’s post said. “We do, however, wish to make a sincere apology to the Charles City school district and community and, in particular, the young man towards whom these comments were directed.” We can’t undo what’s been done. But we are using this as a learning experience for the responsible party and, we hope, for many others in our schools and communities.”

His mother posted a sweet message about her son via Twitter with hopes those that need to see it will, “This is my boy! He is kind, sweet, and talented… if you can’t see beyond his skin color then sucks for you! And just and [sic] FYI… he has never worked on a field….his name is Jeremiah, not Colin…he doesn’t care who you support politically…and he doesn’t remind you of George Floyd!”