Joshua Morse 3d | Law school dean, 89

Joshua Morse 3d, 89, who as dean of the University of Mississippi School of Law in the 1960s defied segregationist tradition by admitting the school's first black students, a move that led to the desegregation of Mississippi's legal profession and judiciary, died Friday at his home in Tallahassee, Fla., his family announced.

In a time of civil rights marches and often violent racial strife in the Deep South, Mr. Morse challenged prejudice and parochialism by fostering a markedly progressive period at the school. He used Ford Foundation money to recruit minority students, promoted a student legal assistance program for the poor, exposed students to liberal ideas, and hired Ivy League professors from the North.

But his efforts lasted only six years. Pitted against the state's legal establishment, he stepped down in 1969, and the school reverted to more conservative leadership.

Mr. Morse admitted Ole Miss's first black law students in 1963, a year after James Meredith became the first black student to enroll at the university, a watershed event in the civil rights struggle. By 1967 black enrollment at the law school had expanded to about 20 in a student body of 360. Black graduates were soon admitted to the state bar, joining a legal fraternity defined by alumni of Ole Miss, the state's only law school.

Mr Morse's achievements remain legend in legal education circles. John Egerton, in his 1991 book, Shades of Gray: Dispatches From the Modern South, wrote: "The Ole Miss Law School's six-year orbit into activism was a spectacular aberration, a reversal of form that briefly turned a conservative institution into one of the most progressive and experimental in the nation."

Mr. Morse is survived by his wife of 66 years, the former Eva Triplett; three children; and six grandchildren. - N.Y. Times News Service