Gene Washington

Biography

Born January 14, 1947, in Tuscaloosa, Alabama, Gene Alden Washington was raised in California and attended Long Beach Polytechnic High School in Long Beach, where he excelled as a multi-talented quarterback. He led the team to a league championship in 1964, earned Back of the Year honors, and was selected to the All-City team while also playing forward on the school's championship basketball team. In 1965, Washington was elected the fifty-year-old school's first black student body president, becoming an academic and athletic leader who was rated the number-one football recruit coming out of high school in Southern California.

Washington played three years of varsity football at Stanford Uni...