Lloyd Gaines was a 1935 graduate of Lincoln University in Jefferson City. He was an honors student who tried to obtain entrance into the University of Missouri to study law. Because state laws prohibited the University of Missouri from admitting black students, Gaines was denied entrance. With financial and legal help from the NAACP, Gaines took his case to the United States Supreme Court in 1938. Gaines won his case, which marked the beginning of the end of state-sponsored segregation in Missouri. After speaking at NAACP meetings in St. Louis and Kansas City, Gaines traveled to Chicago on April 27, 1939. Gaines, a friend of Lucile Bluford’s, was never seen or heard from again. He never fulfilled his desire to study law at the University of Missouri. The Gaines-Oldham Black Cultural Center at the University of Missouri is named in recognition of his efforts to seek educational equality for African Americans.