In 1938, Lloyd Gaines filed a lawsuit when the University of Missouri Law School denied him admission in 1935 because he was black.

The court ruled in his favor, mandating Missouri to admit him or establish a separate law school for black students. Tragically, he disappeared 3 months later, never to be found.

Lloyd Lionel Gaines was born in 1911 to the Gaines family in northern Mississippi, one of eleven children, seven of whom survived various challenges. After their father's untimely death, Lloyd, his widowed mother, and siblings relocated to St. Louis, seeking a better life in Missouri. Despite the hardships, Gaines excelled academically, becoming the valedictorian of his 1931 class at Vashon High School. He continued his education at Lincoln University in Jefferson City, where he graduated with honors. During his time at university,he actively participated in extracurricular activities and worked to fund his education while serving as the President of the senior class. Despite his exceptional academic achievements, Lloyd Gaines faced denial from the University of Missouri School of Law in 1936 due to the state's segregationist policies. These policies were based on Missouri's Constitution mandating segregated education. While state law would have funded his education in neighboring states, Gaines was determined to fight for his right to attend law school in his home state. Seeking legal assistance from the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), he joined forces with them to challenge the discriminatory admissions policies of the University of Missouri, as part of the broader effort to overturn the "separate but equal" doctrine established in Plessy v. Ferguson in 1896. In 1938, Lloyd Gaines won the case before the United States Supreme Court with the case State of Missouri ex rel Gaines v. Canada, a landmark decision that set the stage for subsequent cases including Brown v. Board of Education, which then banned segregation in public education. In March 1939, three months after his Supreme Court win, Lloyd Gaines vanished in Chicago at the age of 28. His dream of attending law school remained unfulfilled, and he was never seen or heard from again.