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Fritz Pollard: Pioneer in Racial Advancement. By John M. Carroll. (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1992. xiv + 298 pp. $32.95, ISBN 0-252-01814-1.)
Ask an American historian who Fritz Pollard was, and the likely response is silence. John M. Carroll has given us a well-researched biography of a significant African-American athlete who also made his mark in films, other entertainment, finance, and journalism. With this book Carroll, professor of history at Lamar University, adds his name to the list of worthy biographers of African-American sport figures: Randy Roberts, Papa Jack: Jack Johnson and the Era of White Hopes (1983); Jules Tygiel, Baseball's Great Experiment: Jackie Robinson and His Legacy (1983); and William Baker, Jesse Owens: An American Life (1986).
Unlike Johnson, Robinson, and Owens, Pollard (1894-1986) is not well known. Raised by middle-class parents in previously...