Breaking the Color Barrier: The Story of the First African American NFL Head Coach, Frederick Douglass "Fritz" Pollard

By Frank Foster

The history of sports and race is messy. In baseball Jackie Robinson is universally touted as the first black major league player, which conveniently forgets Moses Fleetwood Walker and other players of color who appeared on 19th century diamonds.

Football deals with the messiness a different way. The sport employs the term "modern era" instead. So Kenny Washington is the first black player of the "modern era." James Harris was the first black quarterback to start an NFL game in the "modern era." Art Shell was the first black head coach of the "modern era." The reason football has to append the qualifier to its historical racial milestones is because there was a man who was doing all those things back when the National Football League began. His name was Fritz Pollard, and this is his story.

• Language: English
• Publisher: BookCaps
• Release date: Jul 17, 2014

Book preview

LifeCaps Presents:

Breaking the Color Barrier

The Story of the First African-American NFL Head Coach, Frederick Fritz Pollard

By Frank Foster

© 2011 by Golgotha Press, Inc./LifeCaps

Published at SmashWords

www.bookcaps.com

Introduction

The history of sports and race is messy. In baseball Jackie Robinson is universally touted as the first black major league player which conveniently forgets Moses Fleetwood Walker and other players of color who appeared on 19th century diamonds.

Football deals with the messiness a different way. The sport employs the term modern era instead. So Kenny Washington is the first black player of the modern era. James Harris was the first black quarterback to start an NFL game in the modern era. Art Shell was the first black head coach of the modern era. The reason football has to append the qualifier to its historical racial milestones is because there was a man who was doing all those things back when the National Football League began. His name was Fritz Pollard.

Early Life & High School

John William Pollard was born into a family of free black Virginia yeoman farmers in 1846, the family's ancestors having been freed in the last year of the Revolutionary War. They were turbulent times and with laws against the importation of slaves becoming more widespread the stories of free black children being kidnapped and sold into bondage were rampant. Eventually when young John was eight years old his mother sent him and a sister to live with relations in Kansas for their safety.

The Pollards' timing could not have been worse. That same year the Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854 passed that left the decision of slavery in new states to the settlers. In Kansas Territory the anti-slavery Free-Staters squared off so violently with pro-slavery elements that Kansas became an open battleground. Eventually Bleeding Kansas entered the Union in 1861 as a slave-free state. The next year an underaged 16-year old John Pollard, using the alias Jackson Ridgeway, signed on with the 2nd Colored Kansas Regiment, becoming among the first group of black soldiers to join the Union Army.

Records are spotty concerning Pollard's service in the Union Army but it is known that due to his age he supported troops as a drummer and was able to build a name for himself as a pugilist. Family lore maintains that the young Kansan won the unofficial lightweight championship of the 83rd United States Colored Infantry.

Pollard survived the Civil War to return to Kansas where he fell under the influence of a preacher and religious teacher named Hiram Rhodes Revels, who had helped organize regiments of the United States Colored Troops during the war. Revels would leave his Leavenworth, Kansas ministry for Mississippi in 1866 and go on to become the first African American to serve in the United States Senate. In his wake Pollard was inspired to attend Oberlin College in Ohio and become a lawyer.

A bad case of smallpox intervened and cost him any chance at a law degree and nearly his life. After he recovered Pollard learned barbering and he honed his skills in a swanky St. Louis hotel. He took his big city talents back to Leavenworth but was soon on the move again and landed in the town of Mexico in the blue grass region of Missouri. So many horses and mules were shipped down the Santa Fe Trail from Mexico that it was known as the Saddle Horse Capital of the World. Even today wealthy horse people from around the world beat a trail to Mexico to buy saddle horses.

Pollard landed a job with the busiest shop in town but he was soon able to leave and put up his own barber pole, running a shop with five chairs and a bath. Meanwhile a young woman of African American, Sioux and French descent caught the eye of the master barber. Like himself, Catherine Amanda Hughes was devoted to the idea of education and came to Mexico to complete her schooling. When she did, in 1874, the 18-year old Catherine Hughes married John Pollard, ten years her senior.

Their first child, a girl named Artissmisia but always called Artie around the house, was born a year later. Luther, the first son, followed in 1878 and Naomi came along in 1883. By this time the Pollard children were of school age and the parents refused to send them to a segregated school in the former slave state of Missouri. Tutors were hired but as racial tensions escalated in the 1880s the Pollards made plans to move to the Chicago area for the sake of their children's future education.

John Pollard sold his business and property he had