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Robert Montgomery Moore Jr., a man who fought racial activist

ROBERT MONTGOMERY Moore Jr. seemed to run into racial discrimination wherever he turned. He was unfortunate enough to live his early years during an era when Jim Crowism was prevalent not only in the South, but in the North as well.

ROBERT MONTGOMERY Moore Jr. seemed to run into racial discrimination wherever he turned.

He was unfortunate enough to live his early years during an era when Jim Crowism was prevalent not only in the South, but in the North as well.

He was denied dormitory accommodations at Penn State. He and his new bride lived in the only apartment building available to blacks in Philadelphia.

Trying to buy a house in the suburbs, the couple were turned down by every realty agent they contacted, until the Quakers came to their aid. They then had to put up with the hostility of neighbors.

On a trip to California, they were thrown out of a motel in Tulsa, Okla., told to go to "colored town," and threatened by a white mob.

Robert did not go meekly through these insults. He fought back.

Robert Moore, a former Postal Service employee, a medical photographer for Hahnemann University Hospital and a supervisor in the graphic-arts department of General Electric for 25 years, died Friday. He was 85 and lived in Lansdowne.

He was born in Philadelphia, the oldest of the five children of Mary A. Fray and Robert Montgomery Moore Sr. He graduated from Overbrook High School and went on to Penn State.

After being denied dormitory accommodations, a professor provided him with living space. He became a prime mover in the creation of Fairmount House East, a dormitory for men students on an interracial, interreligious and interfaith basis. He was elected house manager.

His education was interrupted in 1945 by his father's serious illness, and he went on to graduate from Temple University's College of Engineering in 1953.

Robert employed the tactic of romantic poetry to woo and win the brilliant Jean E. Campbell, a graduate student at Bryn Mawr College.

She is now associate professor emeritus at Temple University and host of University Forum, a weekly program on Temple's radio station WRTI.

They were married in 1951, and their first apartment was in the Flamingo at Broad Street and Girard Avenue, the only apartment building that would have them.

They saved enough money to buy a semidetached house in West Philadelphia. They were not exactly welcomed by their white neighbor, and when Bob decided to paint the exterior white, the neighbor wouldn't agree to changing the color of the dividing pole. So Bob painted his side of the house white and left the pole brown.

After their first child was born, the couple wanted to move to the suburbs. After several realty agents refused to deal with them, well-known Quaker activist Margaret Collins found them a home in a white neighborhood of Upper Darby.

The predictable harassment resulted, but the couple stood firm against threats of violence, and Bob, a handyman, set about expanding the house to accommodate an addition to the family, a baby girl.

He and his wife became active with the Fair Housing Council of Suburban Philadelphia. Jean was president for several years.

It was on a four-week automobile trip along famous Route 66 to California that they ran into the threatening mob in Tulsa.

After moving to Lansdowne, the Moores became among the first African-American members of the First Presbyterian Church of Lansdowne. Bob was active with the Men's Group. The Moores previously belonged to the First African Presbyterian Church of Philadelphia.

After suffering a stroke in 1983, Bob immersed himself in the computers and graphics that he had always loved.

Besides his wife, he is survived by a son, Robert M. Moore III, chairman of the sociology department of Frostburg State University in Maryland; a daughter, Doreen Moore Closson; a sister, Gloria Moore Harrison, and three grandsons.

Services: 10 a.m. Saturday at First Presbyterian Church of Lansdowne, 140 N. Lansdowne Ave. Friends may call at 9 a.m. Burial will be in Mount Zion Cemetery, Sharon Hill.