Lloyd L. Gaines

The Boone County Courthouse, where Gaines's case was tried

Houston, Redmond and Gaines drove to Columbia for the July 1936 trial at Boone County Courthouse. They arrived as the courthouse was beginning to open for the morning. Due to that summer's severe drought, many of the white farmers in the surrounding communities were there, waiting to make applications for financial relief. Some went into the courtroom to take in the unusual sight, at that time, of African American lawyers arguing a case.[11]

They were joined by a hundred current University of Missouri law students, reporters, and a few local African Americans. Two recent local lynchings had discouraged most of the local black community from attending, although local NAACP chapters tried to encourage attendance. African Americans sat among the whites, since the courtroom facilities were not segregated. The lawyers for both sides shared a table, and shook hands before the case.[11]

By the time the trial began, the heat outside already exceeded 100 °F (38 °C). The crowds and poor ventilation made it even hotter in the courtroom. Judge W.M. Dinwiddie suggested to the lawyers that he and they remove their jackets.[11]

Houston reiterated during his opening arguments that Gaines' exclusion from the law school solely on racial grounds violated his constitutional rights. Representing the state, William Hogsett conceded in his argument that Gaines was an excellent and qualified student with a right to a legal education, as long as it was somewhere other than the state university's law school, since racial segregation was public policy of the state, codified in the constitution and laws enacted by its legislature elected by the people, that prohibited African-American students from attending University of Missouri law school.[11]

Presentation of witnesses began with Gaines testifying on his own behalf that he wished to attend Missouri's law school because of its quality. He did not want to attend law school out of state, even at the state's expense, because Columbia was more convenient to his home in St. Louis than the law schools of neighboring states' universities. And at one of those schools, he would not be as able to develop the expertise in Missouri law necessary to practice in the state as he would be at Missouri's law school.[11]

On cross-examination, Hogsett insinuated that Gaines was only interested in applying to law school so he could be a plaintiff in this lawsuit, pressing Gaines on how early he had been in touch with the NAACP after he had learned that his application had been denied. Had he ever seen a black student attending the university? Why had he refused, in an earlier deposition, to answer a question about whether he would have been interested in attending a hypothetical Lincoln law school?[5] Gaines conceded that some of the out-of-state law schools were closer to St. Louis than Columbia, and indeed cost less to travel to per evidence the state introduced, but noted that students there were not compelled to choose them.[12]^:64 Hogsett concluded by asking Gaines if he was aware that black students were not accepted at Missouri's law school when he applied; Gaines said he had not been.[5]

Houston next called law school dean William Masterton to the stand as a hostile witness. Masterson denied that there was any special benefit to attending the law school for a student interested in Missouri law in particular, since the other law schools Gaines could have attended all used the same casebook as Missouri. He maintained this position even when Houston reminded him that the school's law review had a stated editorial policy of publishing one article in every issue that addressed an issue specific to Missouri, and showed him the Iowa law school's catalog, which touted the benefits of attending for a student interested in practicing law in Iowa.[5] On cross-examination, he claimed not to know details of the admissions process or the school's budget,[11][lower-alpha 1] and could not answer Houston's question as to whether or not Missouri's was the only public law school in the state.[12]^:66

Other state and university officials took the stand, with both sides using their testimony to buttress their cases.[5] Canada told Houston that to his knowledge black students were the only ones barred from the university on account of their race; the university's assistant secretary added later that the school not only admitted students from overseas but extended financial aid to them if necessary.[12]^:70 Robert Witherspoon, an African American lawyer who practiced in St. Louis, testified that having had to attend law school out of state had put him at a disadvantage.[5]

State Senator F.M. McDavid, chair of the state's Board of Regents, testified on direct examination that the admission of a black student would be very disruptive for the university and its students, undermining a hundred years of tradition, which led Houston to ask on cross if he really believed that that tradition "could bind progress forever." McDavid also worried that it would be "very unhappy" for Gaines. But when Houston asked him also if he was aware of any problems caused by the admission of a black student at Maryland following that lawsuit, McDavid said he was not as he had not researched the issue.[5]

Hogsett presented his case for the audience, some of whom nodded in sympathy with his arguments, while Houston concentrated on getting facts in the record for appeal, hopefully to the U.S. Supreme Court, the only venue where he expected and wanted to prevail. Two weeks later Dinwiddie held for the state, without writing an opinion,[11] and Gaines appealed to the Missouri Supreme Court.[5]

The state's highest court heard the arguments near the end of the year. While normally it sat in two divisions, the case was considered so important that all seven justices were present. Two months later, it upheld Judge Dinwiddie.[13]

In his opinion for a unanimous court, Justice William Francis Frank conceded that the state's constitution's provision requiring that its public schools be racially segregated did not explicitly extend to higher education. But that did not mean the legislature was barred from making such a prohibition, and despite language in one statute, which Gaines had relied on, saying that the university was open to "all youths" of the state, the legislature had gone to great lengths to create Lincoln and differentiate between white and black colleges.[14]

Citing both Plessy and his own court's prior holdings, Frank reiterated that this segregation did not violate the Fourteenth Amendment: "The right of a state to separate the races for the purpose of education is no longer an open question." He also rejected a due process argument, that Gaines had been unconstitutionally deprived of his proprietary interest in the university as a citizen and taxpayer of Missouri. "[E]quality and not identity of school advantages is what the law guarantees to every citizen, white or black."[15]

This led Frank to the only remaining question, whether, as Gaines alleged, his legal education out of state would have been the equal of that he could have received at Missouri's law school. He accepted the law school's evidence about its non-specialization in the state's law and similarities in its curriculum to the neighboring state's law schools. As for the distance involved, some of those schools, such as Illinois's, were closer to St. Louis than Columbia would be for residents of Caruthersville, in the state's southeastern Bootheel. And if Gaines were to attend school outside of the state, the state would subsidiuze his living expenses while he did, costs he would have to bear himself if he went to Missouri.[16]

Lastly, Frank distinguished Gaines's case from Murray by noting that that state's Court of Appeals had found that Maryland had made no provisions for establishing a law school for black students and did not financially support those who attended law school out of state, unlike Missouri. He believed that the construction of a law school for blacks at Lincoln would satisfy Gaines's desires if he could wait.[17]

Houston and Redmond successfully petitioned to the United States Supreme Court for certiorari. Now known as Gaines v. Canada, the case was argued in November 1938. Houston said the state's offer to pay for Gaines to attend law school out of state could not guarantee him a legal education equal to that offered white students.[8]

A month later a 6-2[lower-alpha 2] majority ordered the State of Missouri either to admit Gaines to the University of Missouri School of Law or to provide another school of equal stature within the state borders.[8] Chief Justice Charles Evans Hughes wrote for the majority:

The basic consideration is not as to what sort of opportunities other States provide, or whether they are as good as those in Missouri, but as to what opportunities Missouri itself furnishes to white students and denies to negroes solely upon the ground of color. The admissibility of laws separating the races in the enjoyment of privileges afforded by the State rests wholly upon the equality of the privileges which the laws give to the separated groups within the State. The question here is not of a duty of the State to supply legal training, or of the quality of the training which it does supply, but of its duty when it provides such training to furnish it to the residents of the State upon the basis of an equality of right. By the operation of the laws of Missouri, a privilege has been created for white law students which is denied to negroes by reason of their race. The white resident is afforded legal education within the State; the negro resident having the same qualifications is refused it there and must go outside the State to obtain it. That is a denial of the equality of legal right to the enjoyment of the privilege which the State has set up, and the provision for the payment of tuition fees in another State does not remove the discrimination.[19]

The case articulated an important rule of law in the sequence of NAACP cases leading to the eventual order for desegregation of public schools: that any academic program that a state provided to whites had to have an equivalent available to blacks. The Gaines holding helped the NAACP lay the foundation for the Supreme Court's landmark 1954 ruling in Brown v. Board of Education, holding that separate facilities for public schools were inherently unequal and ordering such schools to be desegregated, thus overturning Plessy.[3][4]^:162

Since the Supreme Court had ordered the Missouri Supreme Court to rehear the case in light of its ruling, Gaines's legal battle was not over. Historian Gary Lavergne describes Gaines during this period as "high-maintenance—he sought out media attention, then complained about how stressful it was being the center of that attention. Heman Marion Sweatt, later the plaintiff in another desegregation case heard by the Supreme Court, worked with Gaines at the University of Michigan. The NAACP had paid for him to attend graduate school there and Sweatt reportedly found Gaines "rather arrogant."[10]

After working as a clerk for the Works Progress Administration in Michigan and completing a master's degree in economics, Gaines returned to Missouri in anticipation of the proceedings there, set to begin in August. The Missouri legislature hastily passed a bill appropriating $275,000 ($5.06 million in current dollars[2]) to convert an old beauty school in St. Louis into the new Lincoln University School of Law, in the hope that would satisfy the court. The NAACP planned to challenge the establishment of the new law school as still inadequate compared to the resources of the existing University of Missouri School of Law.[1]

Gaines, who would need to pay his law school tuition as well as his daily living expenses, looked for work in the meantime. Between the continuing Depression and segregation, he had to settle for work at a gas station. He gave speeches to local NAACP chapters and church groups while seeking donations, telling them "I am ready, willing and able to enroll in the law department at the University of Missouri in September, and I have the fullest intention of doing so," but he still had to borrow money from his brother George for everyday expenses.[1]

Gaines quit the job at the gas station when he discovered the owner was purposely mislabeling low-grade fuel as high-grade. He feared getting caught up in the legal consequences should the fraud be discovered. After taking a train across the state to Kansas City to give a speech to the local NAACP chapter and look, unsuccessfully, for work, he boarded another train for Chicago.[20] There he reunited with the Page family, friends and neighbors from his youth in the Central West End. He stayed at a local YMCA.[1]

Ebony reporter Edward T. Clayton revisited Gaines and his disappearance in 1951; the Times described his article as the most thorough investigation of the case. Clayton retraced Gaines's movements in the months between the Supreme Court ruling and his trip to Chicago. Many persons who knew Gaines were still alive, such as family members in St. Louis and fraternity brothers in Chicago, and Clayton interviewed them.[1]

Clayton found little new information. He drew a fuller portrait of Gaines that revealed the young man's disillusionment with his activist path. Callie Gaines, bedridden in her attic, shared her last conversation with her son. She said that both of them realized that he would not be following through and enrolling in the University of Missouri School of Law. She said that he had sent her a final postcard saying, "Goodbye. If you don't hear from me anymore you know I'll be all right." She had heard all the rumors about him turning up in Mexico or New York. "But nobody knows any more than we do."[1] One of his sisters believed he was still alive.[20] The family has never sought to have him declared legally dead.[1]

Gaines's brother George, who had continued to loan his brother spending money at that time, said that when he disappeared, Gaines had owed him $500. He expressed bitterness that the NAACP had, in his opinion, exploited his brother. "That organization—the N-A-A-C-P or whatever it was—had him going around here making speeches," George Gaines told Clayton, "but when he got ready to go to Kansas City, I had to let him have $10 so he could get himself a white shirt." Sidney Redmond agreed that the Gaines family "doesn't seem too much concerned—and never was as I recall" about finding him, due to their resentment of the NAACP's role in pushing Lloyd Gaines into the public eye without adequately providing for or protecting him.[1]

George provided Clayton with Lloyd's letters home, including the last one, written almost two weeks before he disappeared, in which he had lamented what he felt was a lack of support from fellow African Americans and said he wished he were just a regular, unknown person again. Like the postcard, it concludes by implying that he might be out of touch for a while.[1]

In Chicago, Clayton talked to the Alpha Phi Alpha brothers among whom Gaines had spent his last known days and the Pages, his family friends from St. Louis. The former could offer little beyond clarifying the precise date of his disappearance and the duffel bag of dirty laundry he had left behind.[1] Two who claimed Gaines had sent them postcards from Mexico were unable to corroborate their accounts by producing the postcards.[20]

The Pages shared the details of Gaines's increasingly anxious state of mind in March 1939. Nancy Page said she had not inquired closely, out of respect for his privacy, but could tell something was bothering him. She reported a conversation with Gaines in which he was at best ambivalent about continuing the legal case and attending the University of Missouri School of Law. Clayton learned from her that Gaines had accepted a job, and found through his own research that Gaines had never started work there.[1]

In 2007 The Riverfront Times, St Louis' alternative weekly newspaper, revisited the case, well over 60 years after Gaines's disappearance. By that time Gaines had received posthumous honors, and the FBI had accepted the case as the oldest of nearly a hundred civil-rights era disappearances referred to it by the NAACP. His immediate family and all others who had worked or socialized with him during that time had died. Reporter Chad Garrison spoke with George Gaines, a nephew of Lloyd's, and other, younger descendants. George was one of two surviving family members who had been alive when Lloyd disappeared, albeit only as an infant.[1]

George Gaines said his family rarely spoke of Lloyd during his childhood in the 1940s, but when they did it was usually in positive terms. "Lloyd was always held in high regard as a person who set a positive example and stood up for what was right", he recalled. He had assumed that his uncle had died. He did not learn until reading the Ebony article that his uncle's fate was unknown.[1]

While Garrison did not find any new facts about the disappearance itself or Gaines's time in Chicago, he found more direct evidence that Gaines might have fled to Mexico and lived out his life there. Sid Reedy, a University City librarian who had been an Alpha Phi Alpha brother at Lincoln University, told Garrison that he became fascinated by the case in the late 1970s. Reedy had sought out Lorenzo Greene, Gaines's mentor at Lincoln University and an esteemed civil rights activist and intellectual. Greene told Reedy that while on a visit to Mexico City in the late 1940s, he had made contact with Lloyd Gaines.[1]

Greene, who died in 1988, claimed to have spoken on the telephone with Gaines, whose voice he recognized instantly, several times. The two made plans to have dinner together, but Gaines did not show up. Greene told Reedy that Gaines had indeed "grown tired of the fight ... He had some business in Mexico City and apparently did well financially."[1]

Garrison reported that Greene's son, Lorenzo Thomas Greene, said his father also told him of the encounter; the older man always hoped Gaines would return. But because of his experience with the FBI while active in the civil-rights movement during those years, he did not report it. "There wasn't a lot of trust there," said the son. "Even if my father went to them with that information, I really don't think they would have cared."[1]

Some of Gaines's relatives were willing to accept that he lived out his life in Mexico, as opposed to the alternative scenarios. "It's better than being buried in a basement somewhere—Jimmy Hoffa style," said Paulette Mosby-Smith, one of Gaines's great-nieces. Others believe that would have been against his nature. "It's hard for me to believe that he went to Mexico and accepted a big payoff," George Gaines told Garrison. "That's not the same man who presented himself during the trial. I don't believe he would compromise his integrity like that." Another great-niece, Tracy Berry, who went to law school herself and became a federal prosecutor, agrees:

When you think of those old photos of lynchings and burned bodies, who wouldn't want to think that he lived a full life in Mexico? But based on the love my grandmother and great-grandmother had for their brother and son, that's really hard for me to reconcile. If he wanted to walk away, there are easier ways to do it than to sever ties from the entire family."[1]

She has since told The New York Times that she believes her great-uncle was murdered.[3]

In the years after Brown, when desegregation became a reality but tensions persisted and implementation proved difficult, Gaines's story became a cautionary tale at the University of Missouri. In a 2004 paper, LeeAnn Whites, a professor of Civil War history at the school, repeated a version in which Gaines had been on his way to enroll at the school as an undergraduate and had disappeared from a train traveling across the state, with the implication that he was murdered.[30] Gerald M. Boyd, a St. Louis native and Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter for The New York Times, who was one of a few hundred black students at the University of Missouri in the early 1970s, recalls hearing Gaines's story early in his time there. He was also confronted by open displays of racial prejudice, such as the university's "Confederate Rock." "Whatever his fate," Boyd wrote in his memoirs, "in the eyes of blacks, the university bore the brunt of the blame."[31]

The University of Missouri, and particularly the University of Missouri School of Law, began recognizing Gaines near the end of the 20th century, despite his never having been admitted. It established a scholarship in his name in 1995. In 2001, the school's African-American center was named for Gaines and another African American who had legally challenged the school's color bar early in the 20th century. A portrait of Gaines hangs in a prominent public place in the law school building.[1]

In 2006 the law school posthumously awarded Gaines an honorary degree in law. The Supreme Court of Missouri, which had denied Gaines's admission almost 70 years before, and the state bar association, granted him an honorary posthumous law license. If Gaines were still alive and had reappeared (he would have turned 95 in 2006), he might have used those awards to practice law in Missouri.[1]