Fritz Pollard was born Frederick Douglass “Fritz” Pollard in Chicago on January 27, 1894, the seventh of eight children from a middle-class Black family. He grew up in Rogers Park, Illinois, a largely White suburb of Chicago. He was affectionately called Fred, but later nicknamed "Fritz" by neighborhood residents, a name that stuck with him throughout life. Young Fritz experienced racism first hand and learned from his family how to pick his battles and subdue his emotions in order to achieve his goals in a predominantly White world. Pollard attended Lane Technical High, a virtually all-White school in Chicago. In high school he was an all-around athlete, excelling as a running back, a three-time Cook County track champion, and a talented baseball player.
Pollard helped his school win the Cook County football championship in 1911, and the state track and field championship in 1912 (with an individual 440-yard title and a 220-yard hurdles title). He made the All-County teams in football (as halfback), track and field, and baseball (playing shortstop). Pollard graduated from high school in 1912. He was the first Black person selected to the Cook County All-Star team. After a year of playing semiprofessional football, Pollard received a Rockefeller scholarship to attend Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island, in 1913, but he failed to meet a foreign language requirement and could not enroll. In June 1914 he married Ada Laing. The couple, who had three daughters and one son, separated in the early 1920s and was later divorced.
Pollard earned his foreign language credit at Springfield High School in Massachusetts in the spring of 1915 and entered Brown in the fall. In the interim Pollard built a dubious reputation as a tramp athlete, attending Brown, Dartmouth, Harvard, and Bates. He was ostracized by his teammates at first, but his outstanding performance on the football field won their acceptance. A left halfback, Pollard displayed a speedy and adept running style that made Brown a leading eastern contender. Like other Blacks who played football at mostly White colleges, he was singled out for particularly nasty assaults by opposing players. To defend himself after being tackled, Pollard would roll over on his back and thrash his legs in a bicycle pumping motion to thwart attacks.
As a freshman, he led the 5-3-1 Brown team to the Rose Bowl vs. Washington State after Syracuse bowed out in 1915. They lost to the Cougars 14-0. Pollard had become the first Black player in Rose Bowl history. That same year became the second Black college football player to be named an All-American (behind William Henry Lewis, who received the honor twice in 1892 and 1893 while attending Harvard University). The trip to Pasadena was not without challenges. Pollard was refused service by the porters of the Pullman train car which carried his teammates across country. The hotel the team was staying at in California even refused to give a room to Pollard. It wasn't until an assistant coach threatened to remove the entire Brown team that the hotel acquiesced and let him stay.
Nicknamed “the human torpedo,” Pollard had almost single-handedly defeated Yale and Harvard (Brown’s first win over the Crimson) in 1916. The next year, Fritz was named to Walter Camp’s All-America Team. Not only that, in the spring of 1916 he set a world record for Brown University's track team in low hurdles and qualified for the Olympic Team. A left halfback, Pollard displayed a speedy and adept running style that made Brown a leading eastern contender. That year he led Brown to a 8-1 record with 12 touchdowns. Pollard became academically ineligible to play football in 1917, and he dropped out of school in spring 1918. Additionally, Pollard played his best games against the two premier college football teams, Yale and Harvard, leading Brown to unprecedented victories in both games. In 1918 Pollard dropped out of school after becoming ineligible to play for Brown's team because of academic neglect.
Once Pollard left Brown, he momentarily pursued a degree in dentistry, and worked as a director for an Army YMCA unit at Camp Meade, Maryland. Fritz Pollard coached football at Lincoln University in Pennsylvania and served as athletic director of the school's World War I era Students' Army Training Corps. During 1918–1919, he led the team to a victorious season defeating Howard University's Bisons 13–0 in the annual Thanksgiving classic. It's important to note major college football stars back then weren't guaranteed a chance at professional football stardom. Pollard extended his football career by joining the emergent professional game, playing for the Akron Indians in 1919. The following year, in 1920, Fritz Pollard began his pro career with the Akron Pros, of the newly formed American Professional Football Association. They defeated Jim Thorpe's Canton Bulldogs twice during that inaguaral season. Pollard's crucial runs helped his team win the league's first championship, as the Pros went undefeated during that first season, 8-0-3. Pollard was selected to the NFL's first All-Pro team.
He stayed with Akron, when the American Professional Football Association was renamed the National Football League in 1922. There were two players who were marquee drawing names for the new league. One was Fritz Pollard and the other was the All-American, Jim Thorpe. Many players didn't want Pollard on the field. He endured physical as well as emotional, and verbal from teammates and opponents. One of those skeptical counterparts was none other than star player Jim Thorpe, even though both he and Pollard shared a similar background, with each having Native American mothers. When the two first met, Thorpe walks up to him and says, "Nigger, do you know who I am"?, and threatened to "kill" him on the field. Pollard replied "Yes, Nigger, I know who you are, do you know who I am"? Players would employ the "high-low" technique and found other sadistic ways to try to get him off the field. The antics never seemed to work.
After that first championship season, the Pros selected him to run the team. He understood the game and they knew it. As one of just two African Americans in the new league, (Bobby Marshall the other) Pollard earned a place in football history. Pollard became the first Black NFL coach, and the first in any major league sport, when he served as player-coach of the Akron Pros in 1921. Pollard was hired by Akron's owner for $1,500 per game. At the time, the league was still officially called the American Professional Football Association (APFA); it would not adopt the name "National Football League (NFL)" until 1922. The NFL nevertheless recognize Pollard as the league's first African American head coach because the APFA is the direct predecessor of the NFL. When he became player-coach in, Akron again had an excellent season, finishing 8-3-1, but they placed third behind the Chicago Bears (then the Decatur Staleys) and the Buffalo All-Americans. There were no playoff games in those days; the championship went to the team with the best record.
Two years later, Pollard was with the Milwaukee Badgers and Thorpe with the Oorang Indians. On November 19, 1922, Pollard and Paul Robeson led the Badgers to victory over the great Jim Thorpe and his Oorang Indians. The final was 13–0 with Robeson scoring both touchdowns in his finest pro football performance. Pollard would go on to coach the Pros/Indians, the Milwaukee Badgers, the Hammond Pros, and the Providence Steam Roller. Because of a fear of public backlash, he was paired with a White coach at each of these franchises to disguise his responsibilities. He served as co-coach of the Milwaukee Badgers with Budge Garrett for part of the 1922 season. Many still did not give Pollard the respect that he deserved. Pollard had to command and earn his team's respect. List at 5-foot-10 and 165 pounds, and playing in an era long before football became a passing game, Pollard’s speed and athleticism made him a natural halfback.
When he signed with the Hammond Pros in 1923, he became the team’s signal-caller, marking a new era in the young history of the NFL as the league’s first Black quarterback. It is important to remember that the quarterback position in the early 1920s was very different from today's game. In the single‑wing era—decades before the modern quarterback position existed—Pollard took snaps, directed the offense, passed, ran, and called plays, performing the role that would later evolve into the quarterback. Although the NFL did not yet recognize a formal quarterback position, Pollard was the first Black man to lead an NFL offense and guide a team to the league’s first championship. His pioneering role laid the groundwork for later milestones, including George Taliaferro becoming the first Black player officially listed as a quarterback in the modern NFL, and Marlin Briscoe as the first Black QB to start multiple games.
He also served as head coach for the Hammond Pros. The Hammond Pros were one of the weaker clubs in the early NFL. Pollard's 1923 Hammond team finished well out of championship contention, and he never won another league title after the 1920 championship with Akron. Pollard continued to play and coach in the NFL until 1926. The following year, there were no Black players in pro football. Pollard, along with all nine of the Black players in the NFL at the time, were removed from the league at the end of the 1926 season, never to return again. Pollard founded and coached the Chicago Black Hawks in 1928. They were an all Black team from the Windy City. His team became one of the most popular, especially once the Great Depression forced many teams of that era to fold. Pollard was trying to advance achievement by African Americans in the sport and demonstrate that they were worthy of participating in the professional game. This was at a time when the NFL owners were keeping Blacks out of the league in a "gentleman's agreement" from 1934 to 1945, lead by George Preston Marshall, an avowed racist who had steadfastly resisted integration. Some owners such as the Chicago Bears George Halas was in favor in intergration.
In addition to his athletic endeavors, Pollard was involved in several business enterprises. He began an investment firm that served the Black community in 1922. Pollard also served as a casting agent during the production of the 1933 film "The Emperor Jones", starring his former Akron teammate, Paul Robeson. His talent and charisma won out over everything else (that lasted his whole life, even after his playing career was over). He founded the first Black tabloid newspaper in 1935, the "New York Independent News." Pollard entered the business world and founded the first Black investment firm and would go on to be an agent who represented Black entertainers for scripts and modeling. He also began producing Soundies, musical film shorts for playing on jukebox-like movie machines in bars featuring African American entertainers, for the Soundies Distribution Corporation of America. In 1943 Pollard assumed control of Suntan Studios, a talent agency and rehearsal hall located in the Bronx. Pollard and his first wife divorced in the early 1940s, and in 1947 he married Mary Ella Austin.
In 1954 Pollard became the second Black player, (behind Duke Slater of Iowa from 1918-1921), selected to the College Football Hall of Fame. Pollard continued as a booking agent for nightclubs, radio, and television. In 1956 he produced an obscure film, "Rockin' the Blues", which over the years has become an invaluable documentation of notable rhythm-and-blues acts. During the 1950s-1975, when he retired, Pollard dedicated his time to being a successful tax consultant. He died of pneumonia on May 11, 1986, in Maryland at the age of 92. Fritz was one of the most exciting football players of the first two decades of the twentieth century. The best measure of Fritz’s impact was how newspaper accounts reported him. He played brilliantly enough that later historians consistently rank him among the very best players of professional football's first decade, even though the league did not yet keep the statistical records that would fully document his accomplishments. Fritz Pollard was one of the true pioneers of professional football and historians may consistently rank him among the very best players of professional football's first decade, but it took a while for Pollard to reach the pinnacle of Pro Football success. Pollard received football's oldest honor in 2005 when he was inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame. In contrast, Jim Thorpe was inducted into the first class of the Pro Football Hall of Fame in 1962.