FBI files shed no light on missing civil rights pioneer

COLUMBIA, Mo. -- The disappearance of civil rights pioneer Lloyd Gaines nearly 70 years ago dominated headlines across the country, with amateur sleuths, activists and historians stumped over the fate of the black man who successfully sued to gain admission to the segregated University of Missouri law school.

Decades later, Gaines' few surviving family members had hoped to garner clues to the mystery from classified FBI files that can be released once a person is presumed dead.

But FBI records obtained by The Associated Press through the federal Freedom of Information Act show the agency didn't investigate the fate of Gaines, who was last seen leaving a Chicago boarding house in 1939.

An internal memo dated May 10, 1940, and signed by FBI director J. Edgar Hoover advises that bureau agents "are conducting no investigation in connection with this matter."

Thirty years later, Hoover responded to another inquiry from an unidentified member of the public with a similar reply.

"Although I would like to be of assistance in connection with your letter of May 7, the case you mentioned involving Lloyd Gaines was not within the investigative jurisdiction of the FBI," Hoover wrote on May 13, 1970.

In recent months, Gaines' case has received renewed attention in Missouri. The university that denied him admission to its law school honored Gaines with a posthumous, honorary degree in May. And next week, the Missouri Bar will award Gaines an honorary law license at its annual meeting in St. Louis.

"Given the time that's elapsed and what (my) family has previously said, I wasn't expecting anything concrete," he said.

Gaines, a Mississippi native who grew up in St. Louis, was an honors graduate of historically black Lincoln University in Jefferson City. His initial inquiries to the state's flagship university in Columbia were received favorably. Those responses changed after university officials realized he was black.

Denied admission solely because of his skin color, Gaines sued. The U.S. Supreme Court sided with Gaines, ruling in 1938 that the state must either admit him or establish a separate law school for blacks.

Before the high court's decision, any black person in Missouri who wanted to attend law school or other professional schools at the graduate level was sent to neighboring states that accepted minorities, at Missouri's expense.

One of Gaines' attorneys from the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People was a young Thurgood Marshall, who would go on to argue the landmark Brown vs. Board of Education desegregation case in 1954 before spending 24 years as a Supreme Court justice.

Gaines never made it to Columbia. Discouraged by the state's response to the high court ruling -- Missouri created a bare-bones law school for blacks in a former St. Louis beauty academy -- he moved north and earned a master's degree in economics from the University of Michigan.

Gaines then spent several months shuttling between St. Louis, Kansas City and Chicago, struggling to earn a living while grappling with his notoriety. His jobs included working as a gas station attendant.

Gaines, who would be 95 if still alive, has not been seen since October 1939. Theories about his disappearance ranged from a violent ending at the hands of the Ku Klux Klan to a self-imposed exile in Mexico.

In recent months, Gaines' case has received renewed attention in Missouri. The university that denied him admission to its law school honored Gaines with a posthumous, honorary degree in May. And next week, the Missouri Bar will award Gaines an honorary law license at its annual meeting in St. Louis.

After the high court's ruling, Missouri lawmakers converted a ramshackle St. Louis beauty college into the Lincoln law school, a solution Marshall and the NAACP were poised to challenge.

When Gaines disappeared, they were forced to drop the case. It would be another decade before Missouri admitted a black student.