Oral history interview with Daniel H. Pollitt, December 13, 1990

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 Chamber, 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.