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PROPOSED RESOLUTION
HONORING FRITZ POLLARD AND THE RENAMING OF LANE TECH HIGH SCHOOL FOOTBALL FIELD
WHEREAS, on October 1st, Lane Tech will memorialize a distinguished graduate of 1912 by renaming the school's football field for Frederick "Fritz" Douglass Pollard, who starred in three sports at Lane: baseball, track, and football, making all-county in all three; and
WHEREAS, Pollard was the seventh of eight children raised in Rogers Park. Among his siblings were one of the first Black movie producers in America and the first Black woman to graduate from Northwestern University; and
WHEREAS, after graduating from Lane Tech, Fritz went on to study Chemistry at Brown University in Rhode Island, where football became his primary sport, becoming the first Black football player at the Ivy League School; and
WHEREAS, playing for the Brown Bears, Pollard became the first Black athlete to play in the Rose Bowl, and the next season, the two-time All-America halfback, the second African American to be named to a college All-American team and the first running back, led the Bears to an 8-0 season. National news wires carried a story describing Fritz Pollard as "the football star of the 1915 season,"; and
WHEREAS, Fritz left Brown to serve in World War I and afterward began coaching at Lincoln University, a historically Black college in Pennsylvania. In 1919, he was recruited to play running back for the Akron Indians later renamed the Akron Pros in a startup professional football league, the American Professional Football Association, which would later become the NFL. He was one of two Black players in the league, and the Pros won the 1st league championship in 1920; and
WHEREAS, Fritz Pollard started playing professional football the year Jackie Robinson was born. Everyone is familiar with Jackie Robinson's story of integrating professional baseball in 1947, but not many people know that Fritz Pollard integrated professional football in 1919; and
WHEREAS, in 1...
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