Robert Livingston
Most fans know that Jackie Robinson ended the ban against blacks playing professional baseball in 1947. However, almost all football fans do not know the name of the man who tried to end a similar ban against black players in the NFL. His name was Fritz Pollard and his place on the football field and in America’s racial history has all but been forgotten. Who was the man who was inducted into the Collegiate Hall of Fame in 1954, and into the National Football Hall of Fame in 2005? Who was the man who was inducted into the Rose Bowl Hall of Fame in 2015, and into the National Black Hall of Fame in 1973? Who was the man who inspired the Fritz Pollard Alliance established to champion coaching diversity in the NFL? Unfortunately, as is often the case with black athletes, their talents and achievements were often shunted aside in the past and seldom remembered in the present. This story is about a Brown University athlete who was the first black football player in the NFL, as well as its first black head coach during the league’s formative years. It is also the story of one man’s struggle to end discrimination on the gridiron, while seeking social justice for blacks in other avenues of American life. It is a story worth knowing.
