Senator George Allen’s Former Teammates At the University of Virginia Say He Commonly Referred to Blacks as “Niggers”

George Allen, U.S. senator from Virginia who is in a tough battle for reelection, has found himself in serious hot water recently after he was heard using a derogatory term meaning “monkey” to refer to a black campaign aide of his opponent.

Now three football teammates of Allen when he was at the University of Virginia in the early 1970s said that Allen routinely referred to blacks as “niggers.” One teammate said Allen told him he came to the University of Virginia because it was a university “where blacks knew their place.” Another teammate said that on a hunting trip Allen severed the head of a deer and then asked for directions to the nearest African-American household. He then reportedly stuffed the head of the deer into the mailbox at the home. The teammates said that Allen’s nickname at the time was “Wizard,” jokingly making a reference to a leader of the Ku Klux Klan.

Senator Allen denies all the allegations. Whatever the outcome of this year’s Senate race, it seems likely that the racial controversy has dealt a fatal blow to Allen’s plans for a 2008 White House run.

Allen’s Democratic opponent James Webb, the secretary of the Navy in the Reagan administration, also was accused of using racial slurs in the past. An acquaintance of Webb at the University of Southern California, said that Webb drove through black neighborhoods of Los Angeles with his ROTC buddies and pointed guns at black residents and called them “nigger” to scare them. Webb says that he may have used the term in the past but not as a racial slur.

Copyright © 2006. The Journal of Blacks in Higher Education. All rights reserved.