Frederick B. Mitchell

Sportswriter Frederick B. Mitchell was born on July 10, 1948, in Cincinnati, Ohio to Esther and LeRoy Mitchell. In 1964, Mitchell graduated from Tolleston High School in Gary, Indiana. In 1969, Mitchell received his B.A. degree in education from Wittenberg University in Springfield, Ohio where he served as the kicker for Wittenberg University’s football team.

From 1969 to 1974, Mitchell taught English and coached football at Grove City High School where he was one of the two first African American teachers at the school and one of the players that Mitchell coached, Gary Steven Burley, was drafted into the NFL. Mitchell played semi-professional football for the Columbus Bucks in Columbus, Ohio, in 1969. He then played for the Chicago Heights Broncos in Chicago, Illinois in 1972. In 1974, Mitchell became the first African American sportswriter and columnist for the Chicago Tribune in Chicago, Illinois, a position he would hold until 2015. As a sportswriter, Mitchell was singular as the only Chicago-based journalist to cover the Bulls, the Bears and the Cubs as a regular beat. Mitchell also wrote eleven books including Ryno! (1985), They Call Me Sarge (1985), Playing Through: Straight Talk on Hard Work, Big Dreams and Adventures with Tiger (1998), Sayers: My Life and Times (2007), Billy Williams: My Sweet-Swinging Lifetime with the Cubs (2008), and Blood, Sweat & Bears: Putting a Dent in the Game I Love (2012). From 2017 to 2020, Mitchell worked as the community correspondent for the Chicago Black Hawks. Mitchell has held two adjunct professor of journalism positions; one at Northwestern University where he worked from 2016 to 2017 and the other at DePaul University where he began teaching in 2017.

Mitchell served as a member of the board of Metropolitan Family Service, the Gary Indiana Sports Hall of Fame, and as a member of the Board of Governors for the American Football Network. He also served as a member on the Board of Trustees of his alma mater, Wittenberg University.

Mitchell has received many awards and honors for his work including the Ring Lardner Award for excellence in sports journalism, the J.G. Taylor Spink Award, and the Outstanding Sports Journalist Award from the Gale Sayers Foundation. In 1995, he was also inducted into Wittenburg University’s Athletic Hall of Fame, as well as the American Football Association’s Minor League Football Hall of Fame in 1999, and the American Football Kicking Hall of Fame in 2013. In 2009, the National Football Foundation named the annual Fred Mitchell Out-standing Place Award for the nation’s top place collegiate kicker after Fred Mitchell.

Mitchell and his wife, Kimberly Mitchell, live in Chicago, Illinois. They have a son named Cameron.

Fred Mitchell was interviewed by The HistoryMakers on May 23, 2023.