Draft:Bill Rowe

Bill Rowe was born September 4 1956 in Norwich NY. His parents were Richard and Catherine (McInerney) Rowe and he has on brother Thomas E Rowe.

Bill attended one year at Hobart & William Smith Colleges in Geneva, NY and graduated with Honors from Syracuse University in 1978. He came to NC as a VISTA organizer with the Carolina Brown Lung Association (BLA) in Roanoke Rapids in 1979. Bill worked with courageous textile mill workers, dedicated lawyers and other BLA staff to get workers compensation for sick mill workers and to clean up the mills to reduce the level of Brown Lung disease. Following his stint with BLA, Bill was a paralegal/community educator with New Hampshire Legal Assistance in Manchester, NH where he represented clients in administrative hearings and organized low-income communities on a variety of issues including utility shut offs and tenants’ rights. Bill attended Northeastern University School of Law after leaving NHLA in 1982 and returned to NC in 1985 to work as a staff attorney with Legal Services of Southern Piedmont (LSSP) in Concord and subsequently with East Central Community Legal Services (ECCLS) in Raleigh. Bill represented low-income clients in a wide array of civil cases, including impact litigation, regarding evictions, and poor housing quality, employment, unemployment compensation, consumer rights, Social Security, public benefits, domestic violence, and community economic development. Bill came to the Justice Center’s predecessor organization, the N.C. Legal Services Resource Center, in 1992 and was with the Justice Center at its inception in 1996. He served as executive director of the Justice Center from 2001 to 2004 and was the Justice Center’s General Counsel and Deputy Director of Advocacy until his retirement in 2022. Bill is a committed anti-poverty advocate with three decades experience. He has served as counsel in class action lawsuits concerning consumer rights, education, public benefits, and housing law. In addition, Bill has represented members of the state's low-income communities before the NC legislature, state and federal agencies and local governments on issues related to housing, employment, civil rights, consumer rights, tax fairness, criminal justice and reentry, judicial procedures, access to the courts and environmental justice. His work has been honored by, among others, Legal Aid of North Carolina’s Julian Pierce Award for outstanding advocacy, the North Carolina AFL-CIO “Friend of Working People”, North Carolina Housing Coalition, Southerners for Economic Justice and North Carolina Justice Center’s Lifetime Champion of Justice Award. In 2011, Bill was selected to be interviewed about his career for the Southern Oral History program, which is archived in the Southern Historical Collection at UNC. In 2024, Bill was awarded the Order of the Long Leaf Pine. Bill is married to Susan H. Pollitt (1989) and they have 2 sons, William Pollitt Rowe (12/31/90) and Henry Rowe Pollitt (2/22/93).