Lloyd L. Gaines

Who was Lloyd L. Gaines?

Lloyd Lionel Gaines was the plaintiff in Gaines v. Canada, one of the most important court cases in the U.S. civil rights movement in the 1930s. After being denied admission to the University of Missouri School of Law because he was African American, and refusing the university's offer to pay for him to attend another neighboring state's law school with no racial restriction, he filed suit. The U.S. Supreme Court ultimately ruled in his favor, holding that the separate but equal doctrine required that Missouri either admit him or set up a separate law school for African American students.

The Missouri General Assembly chose the latter option, converting a former cosmetology school in St. Louis to the Lincoln University School of Law and other mostly African-American students were admitted to it. The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, which had supported Gaines' suit, planned to file another suit challenging the adequacy of the new law school. While he waited for classes to begin, Gaines traveled between St. Louis, Kansas City and Chicago looking for work, doing odd jobs and giving speeches before local NAACP chapters. One night in Chicago he left the fraternity house where he was staying to buy stamps and never returned.