
{"id":10143,"date":"2010-04-26T11:51:17","date_gmt":"2010-04-26T19:51:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.carrborocitizen.com\/main\/?p=10143"},"modified":"2010-04-26T11:51:17","modified_gmt":"2010-04-26T19:51:17","slug":"in-memory-of-dan-pollitt","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/2010\/04\/26\/in-memory-of-dan-pollitt\/","title":{"rendered":"In memory of Dan Pollitt"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>Editors Note:<\/strong> <em>It does a certain something to a man to see his elected officials \u00e2\u20ac\u201c local, state and federal \u00e2\u20ac\u201c stand and sing, in unison, and approximately on key, the union anthem \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Solidarity Forever\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/em> (\u00e2\u20ac\u0153Greater than the might of armies, magnified a thousand-fold\/We can bring to birth a new world from the ashes of the old\/For the Union makes us strong\/Solidarity forever!&#8230;\u00e2\u20ac\u009d). <em>It gives rise to a genuine frisson. <\/p>\n<p>There they were, more than a few of them, at the Friday Center on Sunday, along with 300-some others \u00e2\u20ac\u201c academicians, activists, organizers and more lawyers than one hopes to ever again see in one assemblage \u00e2\u20ac\u201c doing just that. And who could have occasioned such an outburst but the man in whose honor we were gathered: Daniel Hubbard Pollitt (July 6, 1921-March 5, 2010)? No one; no doubt.<\/p>\n<p>A great many very lovely words were said at Sunday\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s celebration of Pollitt\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s life. We share with you below a tribute delivered by his friend Gene Nichol.<\/em> \u00e2\u20ac\u201c Taylor Sisk<\/p>\n<blockquote><p><strong><br \/>\nIn memory of Dan Pollitt <\/strong><\/p>\n<p>I never expected, when I moved to North Carolina in middle age, to come to know a friend, a mentor, a lodestar, a hero, who was, himself, of somewhat more advanced age, a law professor of all things, in theory retired, from whom I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d hang on every word, ask of every lesson, drink deeply of every story and learn so much of living life \u00e2\u20ac\u201c as a lawyer, as an activist, as engaged academic, as constitutionalist, as a father, as a friend, as a Tar Heel, as a man, as a believer in hope. That\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s more than one has a right to expect. Not all surprises are trouble. Some are magic. Like Dan Pollitt.<\/p>\n<p>He could, on the surface, seem of contradiction. The Marine so powerfully committed to peace. The opposite of Dick Cheney and George Bush. Not chicken-hawk, but battle-tested dove. The man of ideas and surpassing intellect, wholly committed to action. The most formidable of adversaries \u00e2\u20ac\u201c relentless, bold, stunningly courageous. But the most gentlemanly of opponents. The raised voice was not his hallmark. It was, instead, the twinkling eye. Not the tea party type. <\/p>\n<p>A constitutional historian who would deploy every turn of a 500-year history in the protection of civil rights \u00e2\u20ac\u201c 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 <em>Esquire<\/em> or <em>Harpers<\/em>. The most distinguished of the Carolina law school\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s scholars, who cared not a whit for distinction. No one ever accomplished more and spoke of it less. If I had done even one-third of the things Dan Pollitt pulled off in his career, I guarantee you everybody in this room would know it. <\/p>\n<p>No one was ever more elite in attainment and more democratic in temperament \u00e2\u20ac\u201c 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. <\/p>\n<p>I said, on the surface, these could seem like contradictions. But not to those who knew him. 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. This room would be chocked full, as it is, to mark and pay tribute to Pollitt\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s singular record \u00e2\u20ac\u201c literally, of doing what Daniel Webster called \u00e2\u20ac\u0153the great work of humans on earth, achieving justice.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d But there wouldn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t be the tears, the unrelenting sadness, the grief that lingers, born in the straightforward fact that we miss him so badly \u00e2\u20ac\u201c we mourn his unbounded heart.<\/p>\n<p>It is near impossible to talk about Dan\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s career in an encompassing way \u00e2\u20ac\u201c too much, it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s too varied, too crucial. And, for me, an amateur student of the civil rights era, it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s too marvelous, too multifaceted. Every time I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d become obsessed with some new aspect, I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d eventually talk to Dan about it. He\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d usually say, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Oh yeah; I remember that.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d And of course, he\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d played some un-trumpeted role. <\/p>\n<p>A few years ago, I became focused on Fannie Lou Hamer of Ruleville, Miss. \u00e2\u20ac\u201c who was famously \u00e2\u20ac\u0153sick and tired of being sick and tired.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d And after I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d read two biographies and everything I could find about her, I mentioned her to Dan. He said, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Oh yeah; I represented her when she tried to unseat the Mississippi delegation in Atlantic City.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d I said, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Dan, why didn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t you tell me? What was she like?\u00e2\u20ac\u009d He said, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153She was short.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d <\/p>\n<p>Actually, the most accurate description of Dan, for me, comes from thinking about Paul Wellstone\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s constant refrain: \u00e2\u20ac\u0153We cannot separate the lives we lead from the words we speak.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d Dan met that challenge better than anyone I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve ever known. <\/p>\n<p>My favorite mental picture of him \u00e2\u20ac\u201c one that I keep in my head \u00e2\u20ac\u201c is of Dan sitting on the sidewalk a half-century ago \u00e2\u20ac\u201c with just a couple of teenage black students \u00e2\u20ac\u201c picketing segregation at the Varsity Theatre on Franklin Street. Constant, fearless, egoless commitment to the words we speak in the life we lead \u00e2\u20ac\u201c even if others disagreed, or hated it, or even if he was alone. If he thought it was right, it didn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t matter if it was popular. Maybe it would become popular eventually. But if it was wrong, even if it was popular, it wasn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t ever going to become right. Mrs. Hamer didn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t do an opinion poll before she started the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party. Rosa Parks didn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t conduct a focus group before she sat down for freedom\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6.<\/p>\n<p>A life spent passionately, untiringly, unendingly in the cause of human freedom. For Dan, the happy struggle. I love the poet\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s line: \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Should my frail craft prove too slight, for waves that sweep those billows o\u00e2\u20ac\u2122er, I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d rather go down in the stirring fight, than drowse to death at the sheltered shore.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d Dan Pollitt\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s craft \u00e2\u20ac\u201c no matter how many ways you might define that term \u00e2\u20ac\u201c Dan\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s craft was never frail or slight. And it lifted us all.\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><em>Gene Nichol is a professor of law and director of UNC\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s Center on Poverty, Work and Opportunity.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I never expected, when I moved to North Carolina in middle age, to come to know a friend, a mentor, a lodestar, a hero, who was, himself, of somewhat more advanced age, a law professor of all things, in theory retired, from whom I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d hang on every word, ask of every lesson, drink deeply of every story and learn so much of living life \u00e2\u20ac\u201c as a lawyer, as an activist, as engaged academic, as constitutionalist, as a father, as a friend, as a Tar Heel, as a man, as a believer in hope.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":12,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10143","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-opinion"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10143","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/12"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10143"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10143\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10180,"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10143\/revisions\/10180"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10143"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10143"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10143"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}