Would-Be Law Student Disappeared After 1938 Supreme Court Win

Lloyd Gaines achieved an important victory in 1938 when the U.S. Supreme Court ruled the black man had to be admitted to the University of Missouri School of Law if he couldn’t get a comparable education elsewhere in the state.

But Gaines never became a law student, the New York Times reports. Instead he disappeared three months later, after he told a friend he was leaving to buy stamps.

Assistant U.S. attorney Tracy Berry of St. Louis, whose grandmother was Gaines’ sister, told the New York Times she suspected foul play. “He was taken away and more than likely killed,” Berry told the Times.

But Gaines had told friends and relatives that he disliked being in the spotlight, the story says. “Sometimes I wish I were just a plain, ordinary man whose name no one recognized,” he said.

Gaines graduated first in his high school class and was president of his college senior class. If he had gone to law school, he may have been recognized for the civil rights accomplishment, according to the newspaper. “Instead, Mr. Gaines has been consigned to one of history’s side rooms, his name recalled mainly by legal scholars and relatives.”