Leslie Pollard Letters

Collection

Identifier: MSSP_1008

Staff Only

Content Description

The Leslie Pollard Letters consists of four letters pertaining to Leslie Pollard, African American athlete, football player, football coach, and journalist. Pollard wrote three of the letters to his wife Eleanor Pitts Pollard while serving as the Head Coach of the Lincoln University football team in the fall of 1914. Pollard addressed the letters with various nicknames for his wife and discussed several topics including the 1914 Lincoln University football season, events at the New York Amsterdam News newspaper, gossip about friends, and his younger brother Fritz’s Pollard’s attempts to enroll in colleges in New England. Formats include letters.

Dates

Creation: 1913-1914

Creator

Pollard, Leslie Lawrence, 1886-1915 (Person)

Conditions Governing Access

There are no access restrictions on this collection.

Conditions Governing Use

Copyright status for collection materials is unknown. Transmission or reproduction of materials protected by U.S. Copyright Law (Title 17, U.S.C.) beyond that allowed by fair use requires the written permission of the copyright owners. Works not in the public domain cannot be commercially exploited without permission of the copyright owners. Responsibility for any use rests exclusively with the user.

Biographical / Historical

Leslie Lawrence Pollard was born in Chicago in 1886 and starred in football and baseball at North Division HIgh School. He enrolled in Dartmouth College in 1908 and starred as halfback in several games that season for Dartmouth. He was one of the few contemporary African Americans to play big-time college football. He soon left Dartmouth and returned to Chicago before moving to New York to write for the New York Amsterdam News a prominent weekly African American newspaper.

In at least 1913 and 1914, Lincoln University hired Pollard as its Head Football Coach, and Pollard was in residence in Oxford, Pennsylvania, to coach the team during the fall football seasons. Pollard’s younger brother, Frederick Douglass “Fritz” Pollard graduated from Chicago's Lane Tech high school in 1912 after a successful schoolboy football career. In 1914, while Leslie Pollard coached at Lincoln, Fritz Pollard visited several colleges looking for a place to play college football.

Eleanor Pitts was born in about 1887 and married Leslie Pollard before 1914. She worked as a nurse and maid for the family of Frederick A. Judson, a New York banker.

After the Lincoln University football season in the winter of 1914, Leslie Pollard returned to New York City reportedly to continue his work as a journalist. In late April of 1915, New York newspapers reported that Leslie Pollard and Eleanor Pitts Pollard had both died of asphyxiation due to a gas leak while staying at the Judsons' house in Brooklyn. The Pollards were babysitting 13-month old Frederick A. Judson, Jr., who also died in the accident.

Fritz Pollard eventually enrolled at Brown University and starred on the football field, earning All-American honors as a running back. He also played professional football in the early years of the National Football League. Fritz Pollard and his wife Ada had one son and three daughters. They named their youngest two daughters Leslie and Eleanor.