Earle K. Moore, 79; Attorney Won Landmark Racial Bias Suit Against Mississippi TV Station

Earle K. “Dick” Moore, a lawyer who won a landmark 1964 suit challenging the license renewal of a Mississippi television station for discriminating against blacks, has died. He was 79.

Moore died Saturday in New York City after a long bout with cancer.

He grew up in Kenmore, N.Y., and attended Harvard University. He graduated in 1942 and enlisted in the Army, spending three years in the Pacific analyzing aerial photographs. After the war, he entered Harvard Law School, graduating in 1948.

Moore became involved with an effort to challenge the license renewal of WLBT-TV in Jackson, Miss., an NBC affiliate, in the mid-1960s.

He applied what at the time was a radical interpretation of communications law: that TV stations were obligated to serve their viewers in the public interest.

Representing the Rev. Everett C. Parker, director of the Office of Communication of the United Church of Christ, Moore first petitioned the Federal Communications Commission over the license.

When the FCC refused to grant the petition, he waged a successful court fight to bring in new ownership for the station’s license.

Though it was the Jackson case for which he was best known, Moore scored other important legal victories. In 1969, representing the United Church of Christ and the National Council of Churches, he successfully petitioned the FCC to require that local television stations disclose the numbers of minorities and women hired.