Civil Rights Pioneer and Law School Dean Joshua Morse III Dies at 89
by Ashley Matthews
Last Friday, the legal academic world lost a civil rights pioneer in Joshua Morse III, former dean of both University of Mississippi School of Law and Florida State University College of Law.
As dean of the University of Mississippi School of Law in the 1960s, Joshua Morse III ushered in a new era 
of diversity in the state’s legal profession and judiciary by admitting the school’s first black law students. Morse rebelliously defied segregation at the height of the African-American civil rights movement, fighting against Mississippi’s legal establishment. This bold move led to an unprecedented six-year progressive period for the University of Mississippi School of Law.
From The New York Times:
Mr. Morse admitted Ole Miss’s first black law students in 1963, a year after James Meredith became the first black 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, which Time magazine called the “prep school for political power in Mississippi.”
Reuben Anderson, the first black graduate of the school, in 1968, went on to become the first black appointee to the State Supreme Court and the first black president of the Mississippi bar. The school’s first black woman to graduate, Constance Slaughter-Harvey, in 1970, became the first black woman to be named a judge in Mississippi.
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.”
While dean of Ole Miss Law School, Morse used a $437,000 grant from the Ford Foundation to recruit minority law students and bring in more Ivy League law professors. Under his leadership, professors prepared federal lawsuits on voting rights and civil liberties, and also recruited law students to participate in legal clinics offering assistance to the poor.
In 1969, Morse stepped down amid rising political pressure that forced Ole Miss professors to choose between teaching and helping those who faced poverty and oppression. Morse chose to leave, and spent the rest of his years as a professor and Dean of the College of Law at Florida State University. He is survived by his wife of 66 years, three children, and six grandchildren.