Joshua Morse – who, as the former dean of the University of Mississippi law school, admitted that institution’s first black student – died last Friday, aged 89 at his Florida home, his family announced.
The New York Times said Mr Morse ‘challenged prejudice and parochialism by fostering a markedly progressive period at the school’. The newspaper reports the dean recruited ethnic minority students on scholarship funds as well as promoted a student legal assistance programme aimed at poor communities and ‘exposed students to liberal ideas’.
Ivy League professors
The JD Journal comments that after the first black student was admitted in 1963, the school had 20 black students on its books by 1967, out of a total class of 360.
He is also credited with boosting the school’s teaching ranks with Ivy League northern professors who professed a far more liberal ideology than the existing southern academic mentality.
However, the Times points out that Mr Morse’s liberalisation programme was short-lived. ‘Pitted against the state’s legal establishment, he stepped down in 1969, and the school reverted to a more conservative leadership.’
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