A.W.Seay, Secretary, St. Christopher Club of St. Philip's Parish, New York City (Harlem). Typed Letter Signed, January 14, 1914 (typo 1913), 1pg. on Club stationery, to Leslie Pollard, New York City, welcoming him to membership in the Club. With original mailing envelope.
Older brother of future sports legend Fritz Pollard, Leslie Pollard was working as sports writer for a newly-established New York Black newspaper when he joined St.Christopher’s, the leading Harlem athletic organization, notable for its track and field stars, and particularly for its basketball team, which would play an historic role in “colored basketball” before the integration of the sport four decades later.
Were it not for his untimely death a year later, Leslie Pollard might have become as famous as Frederick Douglass "Fritz" Pollard, who was destined to break racial barriers as one of the first Black players in the National Football League and then the very first African-American head coach in the NFL. But Fritz was still in high school in Chicago while Leslie had been a Black college football star among the white players at Dartmouth. Moving to Harlem as a journalist, he was active, at the same time, in what would become the New York City Urban League, and, later that year, would move to Pennsylvania as Athletic Coach at historically-Black Lincoln University. See the listings below for two significant letters written by Leslie Pollard at Lincoln, months before his accidental death.