African-American Football Players at Brown
(1894–1921)
Pollard was one of the most outstanding players in the history of Brown sports, but he was certainly not the first or only African American to play football at Brown.
The Class of 1897 team. Edward Stewart on first row, at right. Stewart served as a substitute on the 1894 varsity team.
1909 Brown football team in front of Marston Field House; Herbert Ayler on second row, second from right. Ayler, who hailed from nearby Newport, was the first African American to start for a Brown varsity football squad. An outstanding lineman, he played in the 1905, 1906, 1907 and 1909 seasons. Ayler died of football-related injuries in 1912.
Herbert Ayler (standing, third from left) on the steps of Marston Field House.
Jay Mayo Williams, class of 1920.
Known as “Ink,” Williams entered Brown in 1916, and played during the 1916, 1917, 1919 and 1920 seasons. On leave to serve in the Army during 1918, he thus received his degree in 1921. After Williams arrived at Brown in the fall of 1916, he and Pollard formed a fast friendship. Williams soon became a “junior partner” in the clothes pressing business that Pollard operated out of his Hope College dorm room. After leaving Brown, Williams played professional football in Hammond, Indiana, and went on to a successful career as a music promoter at the Ebony Records label, a subsidiary of Decca.
Team photo with Jay Mayo “Ink” Williams, 1920.