Frederick Douglas Pollard was born on Jan. 27, 1894, in Chicago, Ill., to John and Amanda Pollard. Although he was a very talented athlete, he encountered racism throughout his football career. After he graduated from Chicago's Lane Technical High School, he bounced from university to university, searching for a school that would let him play on its football team. When he finally began playing for Brown University in 1915 as a 21-year-old freshman, his white teammates at first greeted him with hostility. But his stunning performance on the field quickly turned him into a favored player who had a knack for pleasing the crowds. Brown ended the 1915 season with a mediocre record; nevertheless, it was selected to play in the Rose Bowl on January 1, 1916 against undefeated Washington State, and Pollard became the first African American to play in this tournament. In his second year with Brown, he lead the team to its best record to date and was voted consensus football All-American for 1916. The following year, the game schedules were cut down due to World War I, and Pollard left Brown University to serve with the United States army as the director of physical education at Fort Meade in Maryland.

Two years later, Pollard, along with college football legends Paul Robeson and Duke Slater, became one of the first African Americans to play in the newly formed American Professional Football Association, which changed its name to the National Football League (NFL) in 1921. Pollard played for and coached various NFL teams during his professional football career, but he was not officially recognized as a head coach until his coaching stint for the Hammond Pros of Indiana (1923–25). Pollard stopped playing for the NFL in 1926. The following year, he organized and coached the first all-black professional football team called the Chicago Brown Bombers (1927–1933). After his retirement from football in 1933, he worked as an assistant film producer at Suntan Studio, and he later founded Pollard Investment Company. In 1954, Fritz Pollard was elected to the National Football Foundation Hall of Fame for college players.

Pollard was married to Ada Parker Laing in 1914, and they had three daughters, Gwen, Leslie, and Elyner, and one son, Frederick Jr., who won a bronze medal in the 110-meter hurdles event at the 1936 Olympics. After his wife's death in 1982, Pollard went to live with his son in Silver Spring, Md., where he died on May 11, 1986.