His life had been one of achieving "firsts" for African Americans. He had been a pioneer in interracial relations in an era before many people spoke in terms of a civil rights movement. Many of his racial breakthroughs have been forgotten amid the accelerating pace of the civil rights movement in the second half of the century, but in terms of breaking down racial barriers, Pollard's accomplishments were self-evident. In 1916, he became the first man of his race to be named to a backfield position on the mythical All-America team named by Walter Camp. At the time, the former Yale coach called Pollard "one of the greatest runners these eyes have ever seen." Some football expects, including Wallace Wade, Pollard's former teammate and later a successful collegiate coach, ranked him ahead of Red Grange as a college halfback. The winter before his All-America season, Pollard had been the first black to play in the Rose Bowl. As a professional, Pollard was instrumental in integrating what by 1922 would become the National Football League. Those in the crowd who had heard Pollard's name mentioned in recent years perhaps knew that he was the first black head coach in the NFL. Few remembered that he was the first of his race to play quarterback in the now well-established professional football league. During his playing days, he also organized and coached the first all-black professional team and later returned to coaching in an unsuccessful effort to thwart the segregationist policy adopted by NFL owners in the 1930s. In 1954, Pollard was the first black named to the National Collegiate Football Hall of Fame, but inexplicably had been denied entrance into its professional counterpart in Canton, Ohio. Although the list of athletic firsts was impressive, few in the crowd in September 1978 could begin to appreciate the courage and determination it took for a young African American to confront and surmount racial barriers in a less tolerant America more than fifty years before. Racial slurs, physical abuse, and the humiliation of being denied dressing quarters, hotel accommodations, and access to restaurants and transportation had awaited Pollard at every turn. Although he had often understated the extent of the racial harassment he had endured, Pollard in later years admitted that he had been "niggerized" throughout his athletic career.
Yet, Pollard's pioneering endeavors did not end when his playing days were over. In the 1920s, he established what may have been the first all-black investment securities company in the country. The following decade Pollard ran the first African-American tabloid in New York City. In conjunction with his brother Luther, he had an early involvement in the making of all-black films during the World War I era. By the 1940s and 1950s, Pollard was one of a handful of African Americans who continued to produce black films. At the same time, he established himself as a leading black booking agent and was responsible for integrating scores of nightclubs that had previously barred African-American entertainers. During the 1940s, his Suntan Studios in Harlem was a training ground and springboard for scores of young black artists who sought careers in the entertainment world.
Pollard had accomplished much in eight-and-a-half decades, but most of the fans who saw the small, elderly man accept the engraved plaque knew little of Fritz Pollard or his courage and determination. The New York newspaper strike had curtailed advance publicity of the 1978 Young Award and seemed certain to limit national coverage of the award ceremony the following day. A few months earlier, the nationally syndicated sportswriter Jerry Izenberg had described Pollard as "a genuine unknown hero," lamenting that it was "a shame and a scandal" that "young people do not even know his name." Izenberg explained the oversight by pointing out that each generation regardless of race acts as if it "invented the games we play, the barriers we break and the hurdles we clear." Those who had seen Pollard play, however, never forgot the small, shifty halfback. John Sullivan, who as a teenager in the 1920s watched Pollard play for Gilberton in the rough and tumble Pennsylvania Coal Region, recalled that he was the fastest player he had ever seen, and opponents "did everything to injure him" because he was a college star and the only black man in the league. "He was a real pioneer," Sullivan concluded, "just like Jackie Robinson." Richard Lechner remembered that at age twelve or thirteen he would scale the fence and melt into the crowd at League Park in Akron, Ohio, to see the small but magical Pollard lead Akron against the legendary Jim Thorpe and the Canton Bulldogs. More than fifty years later, Lechner could still close his eyes and see the "Titanic struggles" between the two men as if they happened yesterday.
John Carroll "Fritz Pollard" (1992)
