The remarkable Pollards
Move seeks to name park for first Black family to settle in Rogers Park
As his son saw it, the challenges Fritz Pollard and his siblings faced as the first Black family in West Rogers Park were a major reason for their success in life.
“Growing up in an all-white neighborhood made you an overachiever,” Fritz Pollard Jr., who lived in his family’s house at 1928 W. Lunt Ave., on Chicago’s Far North Side, is quoted as saying in the book “Fritz Pollard: Pioneer in Racial Advancement” by John M. Carroll.
Whatever the formula that led to them, the achievements of the Pollard family in athletics and other endeavors are remarkable. The family’s notable history led the current owners of the home to try to get an adjoining park renamed for the Pollards.
That should be a no-brainer. in the U.S. to admit Blacks. His The park, a small weed-strewn goal was to be a lawyer. But that space, now bears the name of a dream was dashed by an attack onetime city building commissioner of smallpox when he reached who was convicted of tax St. Louis. While recovering, he evasion. But the process has been learned barbering and wen to to tied up in Park District bureaucracy worked in a ritzy hotel where he for three years. became a skilled barber, a trade
As a Brown University student, he taught his sons.
Fritz Pollard was the first Black “When you go out in the world athlete to play in a Rose Bowl you can have any job you want game. His brother Leslie played but you’ll never be broke. You football at Dartmouth College. can always go back to barbering,” Another brother, Hughes, was the Fritz Pollard recalled his father drummer in the Melody Four, a saying according to Carroll’s Chicago jazz band with a following book. abroad. He gave each son a barber’s kit
A sister, Artemesia, was Illinois’ when they left home. first Black registered nurse. John Pollard settled in Mexico, Another sister, Naomi, was the Missouri. There he and Catherine first Black woman graduate of Amanda Hughes met, married, Northwestern University and and had three children. In 1886, the head librarian at Wilberforce John Pollard moved the family College in Ohio. to Chicago, “because he could be
Yet another brother, Luther, assured of a good education for founded a silent film production his children as well bringing them company, was a leading Chicago up in desirable environment,” advertising executive and wrote a recalled Fritz Pollard, one of the family history. five children born there. The
Members of the next generation family lived briefly in Edgewater were also accomplished. before moving to the home in Fritz Jr. won a bronze medal Rogers Park, which was annexed in the high hurdles in the 1936 by the city of Chicago in 1893. Olympics in Berlin, where Jesse John Pollard opened a barbershop Owens famously made his mark. on Ravenswood Avenue.
The Pollards’ roots were in His wife reserved judgment on Virginia where a forebear was Rogers Park. Before answering on emancipated during the Revolutionary a knock on their front door, she’d War, possibly for his tuck a gun in the pocket of her loyalty to the American cause. apron.
One of his descendants was Fritz Pollard Sr.’s parents John Pollard. As an 8-year-old, named him Frederick Douglass he was sent to live with an aunt Pollard, in honor of the famed in Leavenworth, Kansas, because Black abolitionist who died in in the run-up to the Civil War, 1895. German neighbors nicknamed pro-slavery vigilantes in Virginia him Fritz, and it stuck. were kidnapping children of free He and his siblings rewrote Blacks. the athletic record books of the
During the war, Kansas schools they attended. recruited Blacks for the Union’s Ruth Pollard, who died young, cause. John Pollard signed up as a was a star sprinter at Lake View drummer boy in the 2nd Colored High School. In grade school, Kansas Regiment in 1862. Black his sister was faster than him, troops went into battle knowing Fritz said. Luther quarterbacked that most Confederate officers the school’s football team. On didn’t take Black prisoners. the baseball team, he threw an Pollard’s regiment distinguished in-drop, a mean pitch akin to itself in the 1864 Battle of Jenkins what later was known as a screwball. Ferry in Arkansas, a Union victory. Leslie played halfback and
Upon being mustered out, shortstop at North Division High John Pollard intended to enroll in School. Fritz played football, Oberlin College in Ohio, the first baseball, and competed in track and field events at Lane Tech high school.
But in a 1983 interview, Fritz recalled the team departing for a game on an earlier train than scheduled. Leaving him stranded on an empty platform meant the coach didn’t have to explain to the other team’s coach why there was Black player on Lane’s team.
Fritz went on to win national acclaim playing for Brown University in Providence, Rhode
Island When Brown beat two football powerhouses in 1916, the Louisville Courier ran headlines that became indelible memories for Aaron Payne. Four decades later, Payne, then an Chicago attorney recited them at an Olympic club dinner, Chicago Defender columnist Russ J. Cowans wrote.
“Negro Beats Yale, 21 to 6,” the first headline read.
“Same Negro beats Harvard, 21 to 0,” the paper noted the following Sunday.
The headlines he made were even more remarkable because he lacked a football player’s physique. He weighed 150 pounds and stood 5-8. But when Brown beat Yale in 1916, he taunted the Elis with a toreador’s catch- me-if-you-can moves.
“At every stage of this dazzling performance sturdy arms clad in blue yawned for him, but Pollard trickily shot out of their reach,” The New York Times reported. “An ordinary tackle did nothing more than make him swerve slightly out of his course.”
Pollard in 1916 was the first Black player to participate in Rose Bowl, which ended in a loss for Brown.
Pollard was busy off the field, too. For $1 a month, he would press an unlimited number of a dorm mate’s shirts. On occasion he would “borrow” the laundry he was taking in, earning him a reputation as a sharp dresser.
America entered World War I shortly after Fritz Pollard’s 1916 gridiron triumphs. He served as the Army’s director of physical exercise at Camp Meade in Maryland.
His brother Hughes was fighting halfway around the world. Touring Europe with his band, he enlisted in the French Army. He survived a German gas attack but never fully recovered.
Fritz Pollard Sr. went on to play professional football in an era when leagues came and went. In order to have a steady income, he’d sometimes work for two teams. After coaching the Union Club on Saturday, he’d board a train in Philadelphia and coach the Akron Indians on Sunday.
Fritz Pollard Sr. was posthumously inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame in 2005.
But long before that, Pollard’s name evoked reverence when fans heard it. In the shadow of his alma mater, it could be redeemed for cash value in the 1970s, when Fritz Pollard III was a student in Brown.
He recalled asking the clerk in a local haberdashery if he could pay with an out-of-state check. She had to ask the owner.
“And she went in the back and this little old man came out. And he said: ‘Are you related to the Fritz Pollard?’ I said ‘Yes, that’s my grandfather.’ He goes, “Well, this money’s no good.’
I said: ‘There’s money in the bank!’ He said: “No, your money’s no good here. Anything you want, it’s yours.’
He said: ‘My father took me to see your grandfather play when I was a little boy.’ And he said it was the greatest experience to see him run.”