Tillett, Charles Walter, 1888-1952

Charles Walter Tillett was a prominent Charlotte, N.C., lawyer, supporter of the United Nations, and University of North Carolina trustee.

Charles Walter Tillett (1888-1952) was born in Mangum, N.C., 6 February 1888, the son of Charles Walter and Carrie Patterson Tillett. He was educated at the Webb School, Bell Buckle, Tenn.; earned an A.B. degree from the University of North Carolina in 1909; and studied law at the University of North Carolina in 1909 and 1910. He was a member of Phi Beta Kappa, the Order of the Golden Fleece, and Sigma Alpha Epsilon.

Tillett, like his father, chose to enter the legal profession and was admitted to the Bar in 1910. After a short period as a company commander during World War I (he never saw combat), he practiced law in Charlotte, N.C., and, at the time of his death, was senior partner in the law firm of Tillett, Campbell, Craighill, and Randleman. Tillett became prominent in his profession, serving as chair of the American Bar Association's Section on International and Comparative Law (two terms), president of the North Carolina Bar Association (1935-1936), and member of the North Carolina Board of Law Examiners (1933-1943), which he helped to establish.

A major proponent of the United Nations and international law, Tillett wrote and spoke frequently on the United Nations and served as an unofficial correspondent for the Charlotte News at the San Francisco Conference in 1945. His advocacy of international law led him to testify before a United States Senate subcommittee in 1952, urging acceptance by the United States of compulsory jurisdiction of the International Court of Justice.

Tillett served on the Board of Trustees of the University of North Carolina from 1932 to 1937. He also served as president of the General Alumni Association and of the Horace Williams Philosophical Society.

Tillett engaged in civic work as well, serving on the Charlotte School Board from 1919 to 1923 and as attorney for the city modernists during the evolution controversy in North Carolina in the 1920s. Tillett was active in the Democratic Party, serving as a delegate to the 1944 Democratic National Convention. Charles Tillett's wife, Gladys Avery Tillett (1891-1984), whom he married in 1917, was even more active in the Party, and the two collaborated in their speech writing and probably on other efforts as well.

Tillett, who had suffered from clinical depression, committed suicide by plunging to his death from his Charlotte office building on 23 December 1952.