UNC officials' neutrality on race accommodated local residents and protected faculty activists
Pollitt again explains the importance of the Campus Y and the Chapel Hill Community Church to movement activists. He characterizes the UNC administration as neutral during the civil rights demonstrations in the early 1960s to appease Chapel Hill residents not ready for rapid racial change. Their neutral position allowed officials to ignore activist professors.
Citing this Excerpt
Oral History Interview with Daniel H. Pollitt, November 19, 1990. Interview L-0048. Southern Oral History Program Collection (#4007) in the Southern Oral History Program Collection, Southern Historical Collection, Wilson Library, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
Full Text of the Excerpt
- DANIEL H. POLLITT:
-
Well, I forget the name of the organization, but there had to be one to
collect funds for bail purposes. And the treasurer of that was the
treasurer of the YMCA and the office was the YMCA. That's
where people met.
- CINDY CHEATHAM:
-
So, that's where the students organized that were involved in
this sit-in movement that were students at UNC?
- DANIEL H. POLLITT:
-
Yes. I mean, you'd go to the Y and see what's
going on. And the other place was the Community Church. The Community
Church was more for the grown-ups. I don't mean that the
students are not grown-up.
- CINDY CHEATHAM:
-
I understand. [Laughter]
- DANIEL H. POLLITT:
-
But the older people used the Community Church. There were the white
collar University students and there were the black high school students
and then there was the white community, mostly professors, that operated
out of the Community Church. At one time, the Duke divinity professors
got involved and they all got arrested. But Anne was not in the
forefront at this time. Everything that we mimeographed was mimeographed
at the Community Church and not at the Y. The Chancellor was Bill
Aycock, I guess, and we kept putting pressure on Bill to put the theater
off limits or something, or to take an action of some sort. And he
didn't. And Bill Friday. They were neutral throughout all
this. They did not speak at all on the public accommodation. Maybe they
were wise. The state of North Carolina was not ready. They were
preserving the University. I was active. I was the very first picketer
at the theater and my role was well known and out front and I wrote an
article on it and I'd be quoted. I never once doubted that
anyone would come after me, you know. And I was not going to not get a
pay raise, I was not not going to get promoted or anything else.
- CINDY CHEATHAM:
-
So, you didn't believe your position was at all threatened?
- DANIEL H. POLLITT:
-
I felt I was in no jeopardy whatsoever for doing all of this. And no one
was in jeopardy. Not a single professor was jeopardized in any
department that I knew of because of their active involvement with
people who were arrested. Peter Feiline was pretty active in this. He
was a brand new professor; a young, untenured, assistant professor. And
pretty active.
- CINDY CHEATHAM:
-
I'm sure he was.
- DANIEL H. POLLITT:
-
But on the other hand, or maybe that's enough, you know, to
protect the faculty from any repercussions.