Documenting the American South Logo
Collections >> Oral Histories of the American South >> Document Menu
Oral History Interview with Daniel H. Pollitt, December 13, 1990. Interview L-0064-3. Southern Oral History Program Collection (#4007).
Audio with Transcript
  • Listen Online with Text Transcript (Requires QuickTime and JavaScript)
  • Transcript Only (31 p.)
  • HTML file
  • XML/TEI source file
  • Download Complete Audio File (MP3 format / ca. 141 MB, 01:17:00)
  • MP3
  • Abstract
    This is the third interview in a nine-part series of interviews with civil liberties lawyer Daniel H. Pollitt. In this interview, Pollitt continues his discussion—begun in the second interview—about the faculty of the University of North Carolina School of Law: their character, their work both on and off campus, and their interactions with each other. He describes changes in the faculty as well as the student body during the late 1950s and 1960s, offering particularly revealing statements about the role of African American and women students. With both groups in the minority during his initial years as a professor at UNC, Pollitt witnessed some marked changes during his tenure. Of particular interest to researchers is Pollitt's retelling of how Julius Chambers, the top law student in the early 1960s, became the first African American editor-in-chief of the North Carolina Law Review. Pollitt goes on to explain that although more African American and women students were finding opportunities at UNC, they continued to experience an "icebox" atmosphere there. Pollitt concludes the interview by discussing some of his own interactions with students, particularly as a leader of the YMCA on campus, and he describes his participation, as well as that of UNC students, in the 1962 movement to desegregate the Chapel Hill movie theaters.
    Excerpts
  • Julius Chambers becomes the first African American editor-in-chief of the Law Review
  • UNC as an "icebox" for African American (and women) students
  • Student activism and the Chapel Hill movie theater protests
  • Learn More
  • Finding aid to the Southern Oral History Program Collection
  • Database of all Southern Oral History Program Collection interviews
  • The Southern Oral History Program transcripts presented here on Documenting the American South undergo an editorial process to remove transcription errors. Texts may differ from the original transcripts held by the Southern Historical Collection.

    Funding from the Institute for Museum and Library Services supported the electronic publication of this title.