Missouri and other states that provide education to White students must also provide education in-state to Black students, according to the US Supreme Court’s decision on this date in the case of State of Missouri ex rel. Gaines v. Canada. The case happened after the state of Missouri via the office of Registrar S.W. Canada refused to enroll student Lloyd Gaines at the University of Missouri Law School, despite his stellar scholastic record at Lincoln University. Instead, the state offered to pay his tuition at an out-of-state institution. The court agreed with Gaines that his Fourteenth Amendment rights had been violated. Missouri attempted to circumvent the ruling by setting aside limited funds for the creation of a Black law school at Lincoln University. Gaines, with the support of NAACP, continued to challenge that effort, but was forced to drop the case when Gaines went missing, never to be seen or heard from again, while living in Chicago three months after his victory. No Black student had a chance to attend the University of Missouri until 1950, and the Law School there did not admit its first Black students until the late 1960s. Posthumously in 2006, the Law School awarded Lloyd Gaines an honorary degree and the Missouri Supreme Court granted him a law license.
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