The neatly attired African-American teenager somberly stepped to the podium at the Henrico County School Board meeting last week at New Bridge School in East Henrico.

Facing the board’s five members, Najee Lawrence said, “I’m deeply sorry for those I have offended, especially the John Marshall community.”

The Glen Allen High School senior and football team member apologized to the board Oct. 22, six nights after he downloaded and played over the school’s public address system a profanity-laced, racist song that repeatedly uses the n-word.

The song was broadcast as the predominately white school’s football team was warming up with the team from predominately black John Marshall High School of Richmond just before the Oct. 16 homecoming game.

The incident made national headlines, with many people concerned it might be a racist act by a white student.

However, an African-American student played the demeaning song, as the Free Press was the first to report.

“I would like to sincerely apologize,” the student said in his statement to the School Board. “It was never my intention to hurt or offend anybody. I have humbly accepted my punishment and have learned from my mistakes.”

Most in the audience of about 75 people applauded after he apologized.

The student said he and his teammates created a warm-up playlist the night before the game and that he “downloaded each song from YouTube” without listening to them. He said the students assured Glen Allen administrators that any downloaded song that contained curse words would be clean and edited.

Instead, John Marshall players, coaches and fans were subjected to the hate-filled one-minute song, which is a racist remix from the popular “DuckTales” cartoon that aired in the late 1980s.

The young man, who was accompanied to the meeting by his mother, told the board he had intended to play a song by Kanye West. He said the other song came under a fake title and, unknown to him, was embedded in the song he had downloaded.

In the wake of the incident, Glen Allen High Principal Gwen E. Miller and School Board Chairman John Montgomery apologized to John Marshall High administrators, coaches and Richmond School Board members. Afterward, Richmond school officials said they felt the apologies were sincere and that they were ready to move on from the incident.

At the School Board meeting, Ms. Miller also apologized and then she absolved the student of any blame.

“I want to be crystal clear in stating that the burden of this doesn’t not fall on his shoulders,” she added. “He is a student at our school who made a mistake. At a school, it’s the adults in charge who are responsible for what happens.”

She said he “is a young man” who hopes to play football in college and major in biomedical engineering.

“As the instructional leader of this school, I am upset beyond words by what people heard in our stadium … No human being should listen to a song like that. It pains me deeply knowing that children, teenagers, adults and grandparents may have heard the song.”

Mr. Montgomery told the Free Press that the young man requested to speak before the board to apologize. “We couldn’t have forced him to go there,” he said.

After the student issued the apology, Mr. Montgomery told him, “Nothing that any of us did carried the weight of what Najee did tonight. You’ve led us to a better place. We’ll move on and be better than we were before.”

Henrico schools officials wouldn’t say what discipline, if any, the student received, citing a U.S. Department of Education privacy policy.

Dr. William Royal, principal at John Marshall High School, told the Free Press, “I thought the young man was very sincere. His explanations were very detailed. It made a lot of sense.”

Talking with the Free Press before last week’s game, John Marshall football Coach Damon “Redd” Thompson said, “My kids shouldn’t have been a part of what happened.”

But he added, “That wasn’t anything new to us. It’s a part of the real world.”

Camilla Battle, a 2000 graduate of John Marshall who now serves as a counselor and cheerleading coach at the North Side school, said she was stunned and then gasped when she heard the song.

She said one lingering effect is that “every time they have a pre-game song, they’re going to be more conscious of what is being said.”

Andrew Burris, whose son, Romelo, is a freshman player for the Justices, called the airing of the song “disgusting.”

He added, “It lets you in this day and time know that racism is still stronger than people think.”