A 17-year-old Ohio blue-chip recruit created a great deal of attention when he showed up on a recruiting trip to The Ohio State University wearing one of the boldest t-shirts of all time.
Tyreke Smith, a high school junior football player from Cleveland, already receives a lot of attention because he is one of the most sought-after athletes in the state. The Cleveland Heights High School phenom is a four-star defensive end being recruited by some of the country’s top universities, Cleveland19 reports.
⭕️state was great!!!! ? pic.twitter.com/HlWtYBXhOu
— Tyreke Smith™ (@T_23_baller) June 17, 2017
Tyreke showed up for a recruiting visit to the campus in Columbus, Ohio sporting a T-shirt that read, “I hope I don’t get killed for being black today.”
Thousands of people liked and shared his tweet and other pictures of him wearing the tee on various news and sports sites.
Tyreke says he knew he’d be photographed during his visit. “I decided to wear the shirt because I wanted to bring attention to the epidemic of blacks being killed at an alarming rate,” Tyreke told ElevenWarriors.com. “What we would like to do is have people talk about these issues to reduce the murder rate of African Americans.”
There was speculation that Tyreke wore the shirt to remind people of the Tamir Rice case, which happened in Tyreke’s hometown of Cleveland. There were others who felt he wore in protest to the Philando Castile verdict, which happened the day before Tyreke’s visit (Castile was the Black man shot and killed in Minnesota, which was captured live by his traumatized girlfriend). Even though Tyreke says he wanted to bring attention to all of the cases, some think it might have been a slight advertisement for his brother’s company, which sells the shirts.
Tyrese could have worn the shirt with the poignant and powerful message for the simplest of reasons:
He is actually hoping and praying that he doesn’t get killed for being Black today.
