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Transcript on deposit at The Southern Historical Collection, The Louis Round Wilson Library
Citation of this interview should be as follows:
“Interview L-0064-2, in
the Southern Oral History Program Collection #4007,
Southern Historical
Collection, The Wilson Library,
University of North Carolina at Chapel
Hill”
This is the second interview in a nine-part series of interviews with civil liberties lawyer Daniel H. Pollitt. In this interview, Pollitt focuses on his decision to accept a position at the University of North Carolina School of Law in 1957. Pollitt had previously refused to sign a loyalty oath at the University of Arkansas and sought employment at a university that would be more receptive to his interest in issues of civil liberty. Pollitt begins by describing his interview at UNC, his warm reception there, and his initial perceptions of the faculty. In describing the establishment of the law school at UNC in 1920, Pollitt notes that most of the faculty had been hired in the 1920s. In addition to discussing his decision to accept the position, Pollitt describes in detail faculty members such as Maurice Taylor Van Hecke (who was serving as dean in the mid-1950s), Robert Wettach, Freddy McCall, Herb Bauer, William Aycock, Henry Brandis, and John Dalzell. In describing these professors, Pollitt sheds insight on the history of the UNC School of Law from the 1920s through the 1950s, ties between the law school and the broader community, and the relationship between the UNC School of Law and the African American law school at North Carolina Central University.
This is the second interview in a nine-part series of interviews with civil liberties lawyer Daniel H. Pollitt. In this interview, Pollitt discusses his decision to join the faculty at the University of North Carolina School of Law in 1957 as well as the history and faculty of the law school.
[START OF TAPE 1, SIDE A]
This is tape 2 in the series with Dan Pollitt.
I told the dean and I told the President of the University who was John Caldwell who later became the Chancellor at State and he was trying to fight all these bills as well as he could. I knew about such things, so I sort of became his unofficial attorney. We were pretty close and I liked him very, very much. But I decided not to do it and I think there was a philosophy professor who decided not to do it, and three or four architects from the School of Architecture who decided not to do it. So I didn't want to make a big fuss, but the student newspaper people knew that the philosophy professor wasn't going to do it, so we got some headlines. So then it was to take effect at the end of the school year. I'd been there two years, so I looked for a job. I went to the University of Missouri where there was some interest in me and the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia and then here. Those were the three schools that wanted to interview me. I decided I'd like this far better.
How come?
Well, at Missouri I didn't really like the dean. I went to Pennsylvania and stayed with Maury Gelblum who had been a classmate of mine at college, and later he came here as Assistant Dean. But it was that time of the year when slush, there was a lot of slush and dirty snow all over the place. I liked most of the people I met there at Penn, but they seemed to be a little bit cold.
Then I came here and it was dogwood and redbud season,
What kind of things were they doing?
Well, if you don't mind, let me run down. This building is the Van Hecke-Wettach Building. Van Hecke was the former dean for two terms or three terms and he was the first Kenan. When the University started the Kenan Chairs, he was the first one to get a Kenan Chair in the whole University.
What is Kenan?
That means you're distinguished. So in any event, he met me at the airport when I arrived with his wife Jesse. And the airport then was much, much smaller and it was eight o'clock at night. We drove out of the airport and he turned the wrong way. We were almost to Raleigh before he decided that…. His wife Jesse kept saying, "You're going the wrong way." And he said, "No I'm not. I know how to drive. I've been here before." It was sort of pleasant, you know. And then we turned around and came here and we went to Herb Baer's house which is right up here on Gimgoole Street where I was to spend the night with him because his wife was away and we had hot chocolate and cookies waiting for me. So the Van Hecke's and Herb Baer and I had our refreshments and then to bed, you know. But the thing was I refused to take the oath.
In Arkansas.
In Arkansas. And everybody knew and there was no question. I'm
leaving because I won't take the oath. And so, "Why
won't you say you're not in any subversive
organizations?" Well, it was a matter of concern to people. So,
in any event, that's what we talked about mostly in my
interviews here. But Van Hecke told me an interesting story. He had come
here very
When were you that?
When I was with Joe Rauh. So I'd known about Van Hecke and he was a very nice guy and he cared about people. He kept on, he taught equity which they don't teach anymore and labor law which he didn't particularly like and was glad to get rid of. But he was also the Chairman of the State Industrial Commission which deals with appeals when people are denied Workman's Compensation. That was part time, but he was the chair of that all the time he was here, so that's what he was doing. Now Wettach was the other name and Wettach was about the same age as Van Hecke.
Which was?
At that time, sixty-five. But he had come here in 1922 or '23 and had stayed here. He had been the mayor of Chapel Hill while he had been a law professor and then he started the Carolina Press and was the chairman of the Carolina Press.
What is the Carolina Press?
A publishing company. They publish all the books. He cared about
publishing scholarly books and so on. So the first morning I was here
after we'd had our hot chocolate and cookies, we got up the
next morning and went to the Wettach's house to
What a choice.
He decided he would come to the law school and be the assistant coach of the baseball team.
So at one point, we had a law professor who was the assistant coach of the baseball team?
Yes. Freddy McCall. His interest was music. He played the tambourine and the drums in the N.C. Symphony all the time. He was in charge of the fundraisers for the N.C. Symphony. They'd always have the kick-off party for the big donors at his house which is right across the street. His wife, Mrs. McCall, was in charge of music education in the school system here. She wrote some song books with Pete Seeger and Woody Guthrie. She was very cosmopolitan and Freddy had played in college days and after in the summers on ocean liners going back and forth. He played with Skinny Ennis or some bands that later became fairly big-time. He was a tap dancer, so at the parties he would always do a little tap dance for the folks.
Now was he about the same age as…
He came here in 1922 or '23 and he taught real property. He
was on the Law Revision Commission. When I came he was revising a
probate code and then he revised the property code. So these guys kept
their hand in a lot of things. Then Herb Baer with whom I stayed taught
admiralty and conflicts of law and I have his book on admiralty right up
there which he was writing at the time. He had been a trial attorney in
northern New Jersey and he'd had a heart attack. The doctor
told him he could never go into a courtroom again. So he went to Cornell
Law School and got an advanced degree for a year. Then he wrote to all
Southern law schools saying it's the southern clime.
"I can't have winters and I can't climb
stairs. So you have to have an elevator or else it all has to be one
level." So he went to Wake Forest. Wake Forest offered him a
job. Then in World War II Duke and Wake Forest and Carolina had one law
school; they all merged and had it here. He was the dean of that since
he had the heart condition and couldn't do anything. Then he
stayed on. So he did not come here in 1920, but he was the same age,
maybe just five years younger than the others and his interest was the
library. He was the chairman of the fundraising group, Friends of the
Library and he wrote his book. He liked to do electrical repair work. He
had his part. Albert Coates was here. Albert came here in 1923 or
something. And his story is that he taught criminal law. He'd
come right from law school and he hadn't had any practice and
he regretted it. So he had a distant cousin who was a highway patrolman
in this area, so he decided to ride with
The one that they are in right now?
Yes. So when I came here I had two hours with every faculty member and
Albert took me to see the building. Then we went to his house and had
some port or sherry or something. The right hand door of his car would
not open, so I had to get in the driver's seat door and go in
the back and climb around on to the front seat. He said, "That
damn door. I'll have to get it fixed one day. I told my
wife." And he was oblivious of that sort of thing. He had his
eye on big things. So that was Albert. Henry Brandis was the dean when I
came here and he was an undergraduate here and then went to Columbia Law
School and worked for a big New York law firm and did tax work. Then
Albert Coates hired him to come back to be in charge of teaching tax
related people how to be better tax things. Then he also had a job at
the state Internal Revenue Service or bureau, whatever, being a reviewer
or
Then nobody else was hired except Bill Aycock and then me. But when I
came here, Henry Brandis took me out for dinner. He was then the head of
the World Federalists which is what it's name implies, one
world. He had gone when Frank Graham had been at the U.N. He had been
sent to Indonesia which had just won its independence from Holland and
there were a lot of tribal disputes and there were disputes with Holland
still. So Frank Graham went there to mediate the dispute between
Indonesia and Holland. He asked Henry to go with him as his assistant.
So Henry went there and that hadn't been too much earlier.
And then he was Executive Director of the World Federalists which almost
stopped him from being the dean because some trustees didn't
like a World Federalist being the dean, but he survived it and was the
dean. And when I came, he was about to run for the school board. I asked
him, "That's pretty low," you know, I
thought, to run for the local school board. And he said they were going
to start integrating the schools here and he wanted to make sure it was
done the way it was supposed to be done. So that was very, very nice.
John Dalzell, whom I mentioned, came here in the very late twenties from
Minnesota and he too was a one worlder. When he died he left his
property, his house here, to the Union now with Great Britain, which had
been very active in the thirties. His interest was international law and
the United Nations. He was in charge of the debate and stuff. He also
taught at N.C. Central. And the story there is
So you had worked part time at Central?
Yes. Whatever you taught here you'd teach over there. But they only had five or six of them. It was a couple of years before they hired a black to teach there. But John Dalzell had been an original teacher there and he wanted to teach there. He kept up his courses there and his courses here. It was his ker that we didn't have any black faculty. Nobody did. He made the motion that we bring the black faculty from N.C. Central to come over here and teach. He was not a firebrand at all. But that was John Dalzell. His interests were international law.
Did the school do it?
We offered a job to their dean who is a great fellow and this must have
been in the very late fifties. He accepted. He was going to come over
and start the summer school when it would be easy and he had a house
there and there were no
Then I think there might have been one other who was Frank Hanft.
He'd come from Minnesota as well. He got out of Harvard
Graduate School. He'd been at the University of Minnesota
undergraduate and law school and had worked in the Attorney
General's office or something. Then he had gone to the
Harvard Graduate School to get his advanced law degree. He told me when
he got out in 1927 that N.C. paid more that any other law school and
he'd never been South, so he came to look at it and came when
the rosebuds were budding and came here and stayed. He brought his
friend John Dalzell a year or two later. Frank Hanft was very active in
the Methodist Church and he wrote a couple of books on a
lawyer's brief for Christianity or that sort. He had a very
large men's Bible school. Right after the war, he had fifty
of the law students that went every Sunday to his Sunday school class at
the Methodist Church including Bill Aycock and Dick Phillips and all of
them. Then when Bill Aycock was made the Chancellor, which would have
been 1957, his rival was Frank Hanft. Those were the two final
contestants. They chose Bill Aycock. So Frank taught the commercial law
courses and his concerns were…. He'd been a
colonel in the Army Reserve and the Army and he was interested in the
plight of the veteran. So that's the faculty I
So you were in your mid-thirties?
I was in my mid thirties.
How did it feel to be younger than the rest of the staff?
Well it felt rather odd. I was the kid on the block. I was the young man.
"The young man." And you know, the students
couldn't empathize real well with all the people in their
sixties who were very polite and gentlemanly and very knowledgeable. You
couldn't question them about something. You
couldn't ask Freddy McCall if he was wrong on the
This was your third child?
Third child. And all the time that I was refusing to sign the loyalty oath and was looking for jobs, my wife was pregnant. So we were thinking the other day it was sort of a brave thing to do, but it didn't occur to me at the time that it was any thing other than what any ordinary human being would do.
So what was ultimately the reaction of the faculty here about…
Well, then I had to go see…. Oh, there's one other.
Breckenridge. He had come here and his son had been a CO in World War
II, so everyone
Oh, so that was the last? They never used them after that? They lost the forms.
They lost the forms and never got new ones. Chancellor House then retired. He told me later that he signed my appointment and retired and I never knew exactly what he meant by that, but that was the last official act he did. Bill Aycock took over and I took over Bill Aycock's courses.
So what were you teaching when you started here?
Negotiable instruments.
Once again.
Once again. And sales, maybe. I forget. Oh, we had a course in legal method for all first year students.
Sort of like the research and writing course that we have now?
That sort of thing, but more in depth. We had a case book and so on. So I taught that and then shortly thereafter, Dick Phillips joined the faculty and he and I taught the legal method course. So that's how I came here and what I met. I came here in the springtime and it was just beautiful. All this time, I'd gone to Washington every summer and worked for Joe Rauh and we came down from Washington and we found a delightful little house on Rogerson Drive with all sorts of flowers. So we thought that this would be an ideal place to stay until the kids were ready for the first grade. That was thirty-four years ago. I really had no expectation of staying more than a couple of years.
In Chapel Hill?
Yes. And then what happened we can talk about the next go round. But I got involved in social problems and this seemed to be the cutting edge place where the problems were tough, but also, I was protected. So I had a safe haven here and I could sally out and do justice and then run back. So it was hands on type problems.
Do you want to stop now?
Yes, I think I do.
END OF INTERVIEW