Susan Pollitt
Daniel Hubbard Pollitt, Graham Kenan Professor of Law emeritus of the UNC-Chapel Hill School of Law died March 5, surrounded by the love of his family. Dan loved his family, the Constitution and the Bill of Rights, Holden Beach, and Tar Heel basketball.
Pollitt was born July 6, 1921, in Washington, DC, to Mima Riddiford and Basil Hubbard Pollitt. He graduated from Wesleyan University in Connecticut early to join the Marines. He fought in the Pacific as a Second Lieutenant in World War II, receiving several Purple Hearts. After the war, he attended Cornell Law School, where he served on the Law Review. He clerked for Judge Henry Edgerton of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia. Later, he joined the law firm of Joseph Rauh, Jr., beginning a lifetime of defending civil rights, civil liberties, and fighting injustices in local, state, and national arenas.
In 1951, he married Jean Ann Rutledge (1925–2006), daughter of Supreme Court Justice Wiley B. Rutledge and Annabel Person Rutledge. He and his wife of 55 years had three children, Daniel, Phoebe, and Susan.
In 1957, he moved to Chapel Hill, where he joined the faculty at the law school. A constitutional and labor law professor, he was active in numerous organizations including the NAACP, ACLU, AAUP, Southerners for Economic Justice, and RAFI. He was president of the faculty for four years.
Some of the honors and awards he received include the Order of the Long-Leaf Pine, the Jefferson Award, the Order of the Golden Fleece, the North Carolina ACLU Frank Porter Graham and Finlator Awards, and the Robert Seymour Award from People of Faith Against the Death Penalty.
He loved teaching and taught at Georgetown, Wake Forest, Duke, American University, the University of Oregon, and the University of Arkansas law schools. Until January 2010, he taught a constitutional law course for Duke's Osher Lifelong Learning Institute.
He is survived by his wife Eleanor Kinnaird and his three children of his late wife of 55 years, Jean Ann Rutledge Pollitt: Daniel R. Pollitt, wife Linda Weisel, and son Daniel L. Pollitt; Phoebe Ann Pollitt, husband Bruce Ball, and sons Douglas Paletta and Andrew Paletta; and Susan H. Pollitt, husband Bill Rowe, and sons William Pollitt Rowe and Henry Rowe Pollitt.
Gene Nichol
I never expected when I moved to North Carolina to come to know a friend, a mentor, a lodestar, a hero—who was of somewhat more advanced age, a law professor, in theory retired, from whom I'd hang on every word, ask of every lesson, drink deeply of every story, and learn so much of living life—as a lawyer, as an activist, as engaged academic, as constitutionalist, as a friend, as a Tar Heel, as a man, as a believer in hope.
He could, on the surface, seem a contradiction. The Marine so powerfully committed to peace—not chicken-hawk, but battle-tested dove. The man of ideas and surpassing intellect, wholly committed to action. The most formidable of adversaries—relentless, bold, stunningly courageous—but the most gentlemanly of opponents. The raised voice was not his hallmark. It was, instead, the twinkling eye.
Pollitt was a constitutional historian who would deploy every turn of a five hundred year history in the protection of civil right in order to carve a better future. The legal philosopher who could out-lawyer anyone. The only one of us who could write gracefully enough to be published in Esquire or Harper's. The most distinguished of the Carolina law school's scholars, who cared not a whit for distinction. No one ever accomplished more and spoke of it less.
No one was ever more elite in attainment and more democratic in temperament, kindly to all he encountered. The law school staff loved Dan, but maybe not as much as he loved them. And nobody ever knew so much more than his students could possibly comprehend but still believed so entirely in their promise.
This was not contradiction, but transcendence. For as great as was his intellect, his passion, his commitment, his learning, his determination, they all took second seat to his heart. We mourn his unbounded heart.
It is near impossible to talk about Dan's career in an encompassing way—too much, it is too varied, too crucial. And for me, an amateur student of the civil rights era, it is too marvelous, too multifaceted. Every time I would become obsessed with some new aspect, I would eventually talk to Dan about it. He would usually say, “Oh, yeah, I remember that.” And, of course, he would have played some untrumpeted role. A few years ago, I became focused on Fannie Lou Hamer of Ruleville, Mississippi, who was famously “sick and tired of being sick and tired.” After I had read two biographies and everything I could find about her, I mentioned her to Dan. He said, “Oh, yeah, I represented her when she tried to unseat the Mississippi delegation in Atlantic City.”
My favorite mental picture of him—one that I keep in my head—is of Dan sitting on the sidewalk a half century ago with a couple of black teenage students, picketing segregation at the Varsity Theatre on Franklin Street. He demonstrated constant, fearless, egoless commitment to the words we speak in the life we lead, even if others disagreed or hated it, or even if he was alone. If he thought it was right, it didn't matter if it was popular. Maybe it would become popular eventually. But if it was wrong, even if it was popular, it wasn't ever going to become right.
My favorite story about Dan comes from the decision that led him to move to Carolina—refusing to sign a loyalty oath in Arkansas. Dan was an immensely accomplished professor, so Carolina wasn't the only place that quickly offered him a job. The University of Pennsylvania recruited him hard. As they were working to woo him, Dean Fordham mentioned, “There's one other thing. We have a loyalty oath here too.” Dan said, “What? You know what I've just been through, and that's why I'm leaving Arkansas.” Fordham said, “Yeah, but that was Arkansas, this is Penn.”
Dean Fordham obviously didn't know who he was dealing with. There was no one less likely to be moved by prestige and more likely to be driven by principle than Dan Pollitt.
