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Isaac Edward Moore, Jr. (1949) Was born in Colorado Springs on March 20, 1924, to Isaac Edward Moore, Sr. and Kathryn C. Brown, a medical doctor and a schoolteacher, respectively. Moore graduated from Thomas Jefferson High School in Los Angeles and then completed his undergraduate courses at the University of Southern California.

Inspired by Thurgood Marshall, he applied to and was accepted at the University of Colorado Law School. The university and law school subjected Moore to severe injustices. The law school faculty all but ignored him. The White students refused to share housing with their Black classmates, and the university sided with them, asking Black and other marginalized students to "live with their people.” Effectively forced off campus by the university and faced with a lack of housing options near the law school due to housing discrimination, Moore slept in a coal shed for shelter while attending law school.

Moore graduated in June 1949 and was admitted to practice in September of that year. He co-founded the firm Flanigan & Moore with another Black attorney, James C. Flanigan, which brought both lawyers success in and out of court. In 1951, he married Dorothy Elizabeth Williams of Phoenix, Arizona, and the couple made their home in the historically Black Five Points neighborhood in Denver. Throughout the early 1950s, Moore remained active within the Denver community, including participating in The Top Hatters Social Club and serving on the board of a savings firm.

In 1956, Moore decided to extend his service to the community by running for the Colorado State House of Representatives. He served in the Colorado House of Representatives from 1957 – 1960 and then 1964 – 1966. He co-sponsored some of the strongest civil rights laws in the country at the time, including fair housing, open records, fair employment, prison work release, interracial marriage, and the right to counsel (before the federal Miranda decision).

He retired from his legal practice in 1998 and moved to Memphis, Tennessee, with his second wife Alfreda Ingram Moore. He passed away on October 16, 2003.

Publication Date

1949

Isaac Edward Moore, Jr. (1949)

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