Oral history interview with Daniel H. Pollitt, April 11, 1991

This is the eighth interview in a nine-part series of interviews with civil liberties lawyer Daniel H. Pollitt. In this interview, Pollitt outlines numerous civil liberties cases he argued over the course of his career as a lawyer. He begins by offering some brief comments regarding his early career in Washington, D.C., and enumerates some of the cases he argued alongside Joseph Rauh of Americans for Democratic Action. The majority of the interview, however, revolves around Pollitt's descriptions of some of the cases he argued after he became a professor of law at the University of North Carolina during the late 1950s. As Pollitt explains, he continued to practice law, primarily during the summer months, and that many of his cases came to him by way of the American Civil Liberties Union. Pollitt discusses two recent appellate cases, including the defense of a man he argues was wrongfully sentenced because of well-documented mental instability, and of a man named Millano, who Pollitt maintains was wrongfully accused and convicted of rape. In addition, Pollitt describes in some detail his defense of Wilbur Hobby, former president of the North Carolina AFL-CIO, who was convicted of fr