On March 19, 1939, Lloyd Gaines walked out of the house where he was staying in Chicago. No one would ever see him again.
Gaines graduated from Lincoln University, a historically black college in Jefferson City, and had become a prominent face in the civil rights struggle of the time.
He was fighting to gain admission into the University of Missouri School of Law because Lincoln did not have a law school. His case was petitioned to the Supreme Court on the grounds that, since there was no law school available to him within the state, his 'separate but equal' rights were being violated, and in December 1938, the Court ruled in Gaines' favor.