good evening everyone i'm jim duff, the executive director of the supreme court historical society. before we begin this program, i'd like to ask everyone to please turn off their cell phones and other electronic, even when in silent mode they can interfere with the sound system in this courtroom, this magnificent courtroom. in addition there's no photography permitted in the courtroom except by the official photographer of the of the court. thank you. well, we welcome everyone to the society 2025 lecture series, which is focused post supreme court lives of supreme court petitioners. we have held two lectures in this series on our virtual this year. one was about chuckie o'brien. jimmy hoffa's assistant. and the other was about myra bradwell. and we're delighted to conclude the series this evening with in-person presents by professor

kenneth mack discussing lloyd gaines. and i especially want to thank justice elena kagan for hosting this evening, particularly at this busy of year at the court. without the support of the justices, we would be unable to hold events such as these in this magnificent chamber. and it's my honor to introduce justice kagan this evening. has excelled and everything done in her life and her path was certainly a stellar one. this audience knows that history well. it is her second tour of duty here at the court as she clerked for justice thurgood marshall in the 1987 term. after serving as the 11th dean of harvard law school, she was nominated as the 45th solicitor general of the united. and a year later was nominated to serve as an associate justice of this court. join me in welcoming justice on.

the you, everybody. and thank you so much for being here. it's a real privilege for me because i'm the person who is speaking tonight is an old, old, old friend of mine. 25 years. i think we go back now. first, i want to thank i want to thank the entire supreme historical society for so helping the court bring the history of the court the history of the constitution the history of american law to the american public. you do a fantastic jim as does the entire historical society. so thank you very much for that. as jim, this is about lloyd gaines, who was the plaintiff in the civil suit of gaines v what is it? it's gaines v, canada okay. you'll have to explain that. you know and i got a little bit

of a sneak preview because. because it is such a crazy time at the court and we have conference tomorrow. i'm going to escape out the side door after i introduce ken. but. but i had to get a sneak preview. if the idea is like, well, there post supreme court lives, what did happen to mr. gaines and i know you don't, but soon you will. the answer is actually nobody knows. i'm just previewing what is going to say. ken black is the inaugural lawrence beall professor of and he's at harvard law school. and he's also a professor at history department at harvard. so has a kind of joint appointment. and the reason we know each other for 25 years is because ken showed up when had just come to harvard law school.

myself, i was a junior. a junior there. he was a more junior professor there. but then i had i became i became dean and and i and ken got tenure during my deanship. so what this is that i can take credit for everything great that ken has done since then. and and i will. ken actually started professor mack actually started in a different field. he was he got his b.s. in electrical engineering from drexel, and then he got his law degree from, harvard and his history graduate degree from princeton he clerked robert carter in the southern district of new york. for those of you are unfamiliar with that, robert carter was of thurgood marshall's principal lawyers at the acp legal defense

fund when they were bringing all cases that led up to brown board. and he was a great lawyer in his time and then became a wonderful judge and ken got to clerked for him in at cny and then he practiced for a little while here in the at the firm of covington and burling his maybe his most prominent book so far. i'll tell you a little bit about the next one. but his most prominent book so far is called representing the race the creation of the civil rights. and it really is all about civil rights lawyers in right in that time when robert carter and thurgood marshall and constance baker motley, so forth and so on were really creating this idea of who the civil rights was. ken has published all kinds of journals, harvard law review,

yale law journal, journal of american history, law and history review, pretty much everything. he's now a working on a big book on barack obama and the way ken got to barack obama is that professor mack and president obama were classmates together at harvard law school. and so maybe you have some insights, maybe president obama has given you a little bit of insight, knowledge. if you have some to tell this audience about and about where your book is going, i'm sure they'd love to hear it, too, but it's really wonderful to be able to introduce you to ken, even if i am going slip out the back door for which i again apologize and it's good to see such a terrific audience here. thank you very much.

thank you. thank you. justice kagan, my old friend elena kagan, for that gracious introduction. thank you to jennifer lo and supreme court historical society for being so kind to invite here again thank you to friends and some of whom have come from far or under considerable duress, be here. thank you. especially to my father, jesse omak, who recently turned 90 years old for making the track down from harrisburg pennsylvania to be here. and thank you to the members of public for being enough in what

i might say, attend. i'd like to talk today about what it means to get a case before. the supreme court in an era of deep pessimism, what the court might do for the claims outsiders and those traditionally been strangers to full citizenship and membership in american society to get one before the court in an era when those outsiders thought that the democracy that they believed was under siege and to get one before the court when given the long of such outsider claims, the prospect of losing in quest for full citizenship seemed likely than that of winning. and maybe some observers believed because of the deep pessimism of that moment, the man at the center of, that effort to get his case before the court simply disappeared, or maybe not. but whatever happened to man?

others continue to hope for relief from an institution that it so often rejected such hopes. the hope relief from an american society that seemed to have rejected their claims and continued for to work for it and to talk about all that, i'd like to talk about a case that a man named lloyd gaines chose to bring that reached court in 1938 on the afternoon november 9th, 1938, in acp lawyers charles houston and sidney r redman assisted by henry sb appeared in this representing an african american missourian named lloyd gaines, who had sued the university of missouri for excluding him from admission to its law school because his race. gaines was an ambitious, handsome man, and he had graduated from lincoln university, the state's university for africa americans in jefferson, missouri.

now, he wanted to go to law school. the trouble was that lincoln didn't have a law school, but the whites only university of missouri, located about 33 miles away in columbia, did, although gaines couldn't study at lincoln, there was a state that authorized lincoln to create scholarships for black students who wanted to go to graduate school to study at universities in other states. but gaines didn't want to go out of state to study law. instead applied to the university of missouri law school and with the cp's help, he sued the university's registrar, a man named silas. and the proceeding as a petition for the writ of mandamus. the case would be known as maury. excuse me? the case would be known as missouri excel versus canada lloyd gaines the launch his legal case at a of great upheaval for african in the us

and for the larger society of which they were a part. gaines filed suit only shortly after the moment that the great historian rayford logan named famously the the lowest point in the history of black freedom in the south segregation, disenfranchisement and mob circumscribed african american life and other of the country, black citizens found themselves excluded from the things that white felt their white fellow citizens could rely on. as a matter course to build wealth and a stake in society. things like jobs and housing, and in many cases from integrated as well in the writing and teaching of history, the consensus was the period of the greatest amount of black freedom so far in the nation's existence, the reconstruction era after the civil war had been a tragic, deplorable era that was best forgotten or explained

away as a mistake. with the ascension of woodrow wilson to the presidency or even the national government, it put itself behind the effort to segregate and exclude black americans from the federal government's vast workforce, from the federal jobs and employment had been and been one of the few historical routes to economics security for black americans. gaines would file his lawsuit against the university of missouri in an era in which presence of black history in the schools and the presence of african-americans in good jobs and good housing, the presence of black voters, the political process and the presence of black students in schools and prestigious universities were things that had to be explained away and avoided, if possible, as a departure from the expected normal state. things. and the trend seemed to be expanding beyond the united states borders in south africa,

afrikaner nationalists were completing a decades long process that would strip away land from the black population, segregate them from jobs, or force them to live in exile in different parts of the country and systematic lee disfranchized them. every stake in south african society in a system that came very much to resemble crow in america. lloyd gaines had been born to a tenant farming family in lafayette county, mississippi, in 1926, when he was in sixth grade. his family to st louis, an industrial perched along the banks of the mississippi, a place where he could dream big dreams. and gaines went high school at vision high, which had been named for george visual, the first black student to graduate

from oberlin college, where he valedictorian and one of the first black lawyers in the united states. gaines would later recall in a deposition in his lawsuit that he decided to become a lawyer during his time at vassar high, most however, the thing that he really wanted to do when he graduated was become a teacher. so gaines attended stowe teachers college in saint louis. his opportunity to get more education would be directly funded by the federal and state governments. in 1890, congress had enacted the second version of the famous war era moral act that established land grant colleges across the country. but even this version of the famous moral act attended attested to the divide it minor the country with respect to whether america, african-americans really belonged and its prestigious universities in the statue congress provided that quote no money shall be paid out under

this subchapter to any or territory for support or maintenance of a college where a distinction of race or color is made in the admission of students. so seemingly congress was saying that you can't exclude students race in admission to land grant colleges. but there was a catch the statute provided that quote the establishment and maintenance of such colleges separately for white and colored students shall be held to be a compliance with the provisions of the statute. those colleges were funded equally. that sounded a lot like separate but equal. and under that provision of the statute, the state of missouri had decided to fund university as a separate land grant. black school. gaines took advantage of that segregated funding stream and went on to lincoln, where he became an honors graduate and of course president of his class. but then for some reason he set

sights on the university of missouri law school. we don't know what exactly made gaines want to apply to the university of missouri's law, but we do know that in the mid 1930s, groups of young, college educated southern blacks in places like durham, north carolina and baltimore began to get interested in bringing cases to challenge the color bars that kept them out of southern state. we know one other lincoln graduate had applied to study at the university university of missouri law school in 1931 and reapplied along with several other black students to the university's graduate schools. about six months after gaines made his own whatever the origins of his case in june 1935, lloyd gaines applied the university's law school just about at the same time that charles houston and saint louis in c.p. lawyer sidney redmond became in finding a local student who wanted challenge segregation at the university. so gaines applied to the

university and represented the naacp. houston and and henry sb filed his legal case. gaines case presented a clearly goal question was missouri giving lloyd gaines equal protection of the laws as required by the 14th amendment if it refused to admit him to its flagship state university of his race, and instead gave him a scholarship to study law elsewhere, gaines lost on that claim in missouri state courts and in favor of 1938, houston and moore, houston and redman arrived in this courtroom to argue case in the supreme court. lloyd gaines case arrived in the supreme court at. a crossroads moment for the acp. the rights movement and indeed for the court itself. we now indelibly associate the naacp lodestar civil rights victories such the brown versus

board of education case. but that wasn't at all how african-americans and those sympathetic to their claims view the organization in the middle of the 1930s, the acp founded by an interracial group of reformers in 1909, had scored a few initial legal victories in the supreme court, such as its victory in moore versus in 1923, where the court held that arkansas, a murder trial involving, a group of black defendants who had been involved in union organizing violates the due process clause of the 14th amendment because it had been conducted an atmosphere of mob violence. but note that the victory in moore versus dempsey was a negative use of the 14th amendment to protect criminal defendants from unfair trials and execute since it was quite another thing to say that one could use litigation to make a significant dent in jim crow and white supremacy across the

country. for several years, the naacp and its chief lawyer, charles houston, assisted by thurgood marshall, had been testing out a careful litigation strategy, bringing cases to see if they could figure out how to use law to make some inroads against jim crow in, 1935. that scored an important victory in maryland, where they had challenged the university of maryland law school's practice of exclude black students from its law school and paying them to study at integrated law schools out of state maryland had copied that practice from missouri. the naacp won that case involving a black man named donald murray who wanted to study law in the state's highest state court. the maryland court of appeals in 1936. at the same time, however many people within the naacp were deeply skeptical of its court cases. at least as a means to seriously challenge.

second class citizenship. mainstream public opinion at the time held that the court cases couldn't find merely alter entrenched social and political, at least without an accompanying change in majority public opinion and during the 1930s, a group of younger reformers inside the naacp were taking exactly that position. the young reformers called for orienting the organization away from what they regarded as ineffectual court cases and reoriented it towards direct action protests and interracial union organizing, which they claimed was the only way to make social change. and, to be frank, looking back over the supreme court's long history in cases involving black equality, there were good reasons for that. the supreme court's first opportunity to rule directly on the question of whether were full citizens, had had come in its now notorious 57 ruling in dred scott versus where chief justice roger tawney concluded

that african-americans could not be citizens of the united states or of any state. and of course, after the civil war, the court did quite famously construe the reconstruction and era of 14th and 15th amendments in the postwar civil rights laws as narrowly. it could involve in cases involving mob violence against blacks, naked deprivations of their voting rights and racial segregation leaving black citizens in southern states and indeed nationwide, with almost no federal statutory constitutional rights on which, they could rely. there were a few recent exceptions to that trend, such as the court's narrow rulings, cases of black criminal defendants such as moore versus dempsey, and equally narrow rulings and in a voting rights case known as nixon versus herndon, decided in 1927 a ruling that was quickly circumvented. but the court did not shown much to read. the reconstruction era

amendments broadly. indeed as late as 1945, supreme court justice felix frankfurter, who in a dissent would describe the post-civil civil rights acts as, quote, born of that vengeful spirit, which to no small degree envisioned the reconsider option era, close quote. justice robert jackson, in an unpublished dissent to the brown board of education decision, a decision he later decided to join refer to reconstruction the era that gave us the 14th and 15th amendments as, quote, a passionate, confused and deplorable era. the effort to give black citizens equal rights and accorded a desultory reputation, even among some of the justices at the same time as every law student now knows that the supreme court, as well as other fits state and federal courts, had chosen to read the 14th amendment broadly to create new

constituted optional rights for corporations and others who wanted to challenge regulation. the 14th amendment framed and ratified to protect african americans, had been reinterpreted to be almost of almost no use to them and had been pressed into service instead to protect the interests of the powerful. the discrimination that seemed to move the country and the courts was discrimination against. the powerful rather than that against african-americans. thus looking at the thing from the perspective of 1938, the of the akp's efforts to rely on litigation and courts to make a dent in jim crow had good reason think that they had the better of the argument. and if that wasn't enough lloyd gaines arrived here at a crossroads moment for the court as well. if houston and redmond had

arrived only few years later, they wouldn't been making their arguments in this courtroom. no, they'd have been making them across street in the former senate chambers, where on on the floor of the capitol, where the court then held its proceedings a so informal that there hadn't even been room for the justices to have individual individual chambers and where tourists might bump into justices as they assembled arguments. but now, when houston and redmond arrived here, they could see the building's great hall with its busts of chief justices seated on marble pedestals. they the friezes and other artwork depicting ancient givers and symbols of ageless potency. they might have seen the bronze front doors. unfortunately, we can't see today because they're under

construction with their bas relief images of, among other things, the shield of achilles, the roman emperor, justinian's code, and king john of placed the seal on magna carta as a charter, liberty and freedom from tyrannical rulers. which is now in possession an original copy, which is now in possession of harvard university. as we learned last week week, those doors that greeted houston and redmond made their argument in the most pointed of terms, the principles of law were ancient and timeless as those doors argued and certainly not subject to the vicissitudes of politics, chief justice william h. taft had separated deliberately, selected this building's architect, cast who loved classical forms. the ones that we see around us and detested modernism and not

all the justices of the court were pleased with the result. justice harlan firestone called building, quote, almost bombay nastily pretentious. he referred to it as a, quote, fault or a mortally. this building was constructed to communicate and it still does communicate. an institutionally conservative view of law. and for reason it had been constructed in the middle of the 19th thirties when the court was still unsure of itself in its role in the world. a little noticed law passed by congress, the judiciary act of 1925 had given the court the power, the power to largely pick and choose cases. it would decide reducing the number of full opinions the court might write each year, each term from perhaps 250 opinions each term to less than 150, much the relief of the

1920s era justices and no doubt the present court as well in helping turn the supreme court into the powerful arbiter, policy and politics that is now familiar role as the legal scholar robert post has recently demonstrate that during the 1920s and 1930s in especially during the new deal, the justices, it struggled with cases after cases that brought them into conflict with the other two branches of the federal government over the ability of the government to respond to 20th century social problems. only one year after gains, his case had arrived at the court. sorry, only one year before kane's case had arrived at the court. franklin roosevelt had proposed his famous court packing plan, which would allow him to appoint additional justices to the court that it famously invalidated major pieces of new deal legislation and almost simultaneous the court began to uphold major economic

regulations, helping to diffuse the controversy. this building could not have been better or more expertly constructed to abstract the court and its workings from all the controversies swirling around it. when it was complete in 1935 and now a case brought by gains in his lawyers had arrived asking the supreme court to inject itself back into public controversies fraught with passion. houston red men were asking it to get potentially get itself involved in a conflict with white who believed passionately in segregation. and if that weren't enough, franklin roosevelt had finally gotten a chance to make two appointments to the court. but both of these new justices, stanley reed and hugo black, southerners, reed hailing from kentucky and black from alabama the new justice. black was a former member of the robert e lee chapter of ku klux

klan. the institutionally conservative thing to do would be for the court to do what it historically done, which was read black rights narrowly, and to reject keynes's claim. and there a not uncommon telling route for the court to do exactly that. recall that lincoln university, a state funded university, and state of missouri, had funded lincoln in a way that contemplated it was or could be made into the equal of the university of missouri. the text of the state law providing for the other state scholarships provided that quote pending the development of lincoln university, the university's curators could for tuition and fees for courses offered by lincoln and also provided that quote whenever the board of curators deem it advisable, they shall have the power to open any necessary school or department. the state of missouri's position

in the gaines case was that the court reject gaines claim and let him petition lincoln to create a black law school where presumably to get an equal education. that option available to the supreme court, as it considered his case and indeed it was the institutionally conservative to do it would a potential conflict between the court and the state that might resist a more direct ruling and it would be consistent with. the court's past practice of reading black constitutional narrowly. in addition, there was a prospect that a desegregation ruling might be resisted by missourians. just as mcreynolds hinted at this in his dissent from the eventual ruling in the case where he expressed the worry, the decision to integrate the university might quote, -- if i both, as he put it a court order to southern university might destroy it.

mcreynolds hinted. but despite that houston pressed their cases on the supreme court. indeed, houston told the justices it wasn't enough to send gates out of state, or presumably to an inferior school in his own state, where presumably his needs would be more evenly matched to his circumstances instead of sending him to the university of missouri, where presumably there would be a mismatch, houston that quote the value of his to a citizen of an education. his own state university includes not classroom value but diploma of value. it includes, quote, the prestige reputation of the school of law among, the citizens of the state. there were real reasons have black students at the most prestigious rather than sending them to some other university that's opposed, they better matched their circumstances. houston argued to the court.

so on that monday sorry. so on that november day in 1938, houston and redmond assisted by henry sb arrived in this courtroom and presented their arguments vigorously seeking equal justice under the law. about one month later, the court issued its decision in a 6 to 2 ruling with. chief justice charles evan hughes writing majority opinion the real issue in the case was whether the other states scholarship program satisfied missouri's constitutional obligation to provide with equal protection of the laws. and the court held that did not the justices ruled missouri was obligated to provide opportunities to gains within its own borders rather than sending him elsewhere so lloyd gaines was entitled to attend the university of missouri law school or presumably an equivalent missouri law school for blacks and no such school

existed. but then the missouri legislature responded to the supreme court by promptly passing a law authorizing lincoln university established to establishing to establish a law school and appropriating a substantial amount of for its for its founding and by the next fall lincoln law school was up and running with a law library in 19 students. its dean was the former dean of howard law school. so houston, redmond, a.b. and gaines would have to go back to court in and to prove that lincoln law school wasn't equal to the he would receive at the university of missouri. despite the setback, the gaines decision was a major victory for the naacp in a landmark legal

ruling. the case have been followed avidly in black press across the country and the mainstream white press as well. time magazine covered, it it was the first supreme court victory for the jcp in its education cases, and the court's decision was a validation for the organization's much criticized strategy. if it had gone the other way, perhaps the naacp have downplayed or delayed its court based program a bit or backed off from its education cases and the supreme court's subsequent history might have been different, but it hadn't. and now everyone understood, that there would be more cases to come and that more of them would reach. the court but before the naacp could do that, its lawyers had to take the next step. in gein's case. so in august of 1939, houston and redmond with the assistance of sb, began to return to the missouri courts and to make their case they needed lloyd

gaines. the only problem with that was that while their case in the appellate courts, gaines had disappeared, while his case was pending, lloyd gaines had gone to the university of michigan to pursue graduate story, pursue graduate in economics, thinking that it might better prepare him for law school. he didn't have a lot of money, so he spent a lot of his time looking for jobs and making speeches in support of the cfpb's efforts. he eventually moved from missouri to chicago to look for work. according to his friends one day in march of 1939, four months after the supreme court decided the case in its favor, gaines had left his home in chicago and simply never returned. the naacp and many members of the black public were incredulous when they learned that he had disappeared. where is he?

asked a front page headline in the local black paper, the saint louis argus, alongside photo of the missing man. where's lloyd gaines? have you seen him? asked a similar front page article in the kansas city call, but neither gaines, his family, the kps officials nor, the members of the public who ardently looked for would ever see him again. his case would eventually be dismissed by the missouri courts. from the beginning, everyone seemed to believe that there just had to be some for his disappearance. there had to be some explanation for something that seemed to defy explanation. the first theory that was debated in the press was that gaines been kidnaped or murdered by supporters segregation, who presumably at from missouri to chicago to remove the person on whom the desegregation of the state's university depended. was he bribed by unknown

influential persons or is he a the victim of foul play? asked a column in the baltimore afro-american. the second theory was that gaines was simply discouraged. it had been a long time since his case had been filed, and there was another fight ahead. perhaps he simply lost interest in continuing and went into hiding. any individual takes upon himself the noble task of acting in any to help his race or nation should stick with that task until. the bitter end, thundered the newark strydom news in evident. the third theory was that proponents of segregation paid him off to disappear if he has voluntarily in hiding. as the pittsburgh courier. is it possible that is making his disappearance financially worthwhile? rumor has it that he had gone into hiding in mexico either having decided to go there on his own or with the proceeds of

a bribe. his chief lawyer, charles houston. however, dismissed such theories. i do not know why gaines has disappeared or even where he is at present, houston told the press. the idea of anyone of bribery or foul play had anything to do with that boy's disappearance is most absurd, he said. and from that time to our time, people have continued to ask what happened to lloyd gaines? what do we make of the disappearance of the man? just at the moment that case seemed to reject. inject a note of optimism into what had been a quite pessimistic story of black equality and democracy. the black press it intensely at the time and for the past 85 or 86 years. journalists investigative reporters and eventually scholars have periodically

pursued his story, trying to answer question. relatives and friends were duly tracked down. rumors were duly. there have been periodic requests that the fbi open a case on gaines including another request by the naacp as recently as 2007. which the fbi declined to take up. there is at least one full length book exploring his case and his disappearance still. gaines his disappearance remains, a mystery. here's what we know of gaines his life during the time his lawsuit was pending in the courts. and it is a story of hope and pessimism. it was a difficult time for both gaines and his lawyers. for his lawyers, there was a constant menace of government repression for for representing an unpopular client or cause

authorities in states like. missouri would sometimes bring ethics charges against civil rights lawyers. a accusing them of an ill defined ethics known as bearer tree solicitation clients. rather than simply waiting for them to appear from the beginning, redman pointed back, reported to houston that his every step was being monitored by missouri officials, who maneuvering openly to bring ethics against him by claiming that he had solicited gaines to sue, and years later, as his civil rights movement gathered steam in the 1950s. states alabama and virginia would go much further to protect perfect techniques to reach inside of private organizations like the naacp, to ask them to divulge information might make their members subject to state repression or to bring its lawyers up on ethics charges. a tree and other violations as

and it was only the intervention of the supreme court in cases known as acp versus button in 1963 and acp covers alabama in 1958, which gave the practice of state repression lawyers for simply doing things that state don't like. a bad name gaines himself had endured a set of more difficult challenges. lloyd gaines was a pioneer. he was confronting a question that named in future test cases that might reach the supreme court would also confront what does it mean for such a person to represent something much larger than themselves as case proceeded through the courts? people particularly, black people knew. his name all across the country to be a plaintiff in a case this

was to live around the edges of power without the power to take actions to drive case forward. his lawyers did those kinds of things. he didn't come to this courtroom to see his case argued. he wasn't needed. and he was struggling mightily just to support. still, his case was hugely important for the future of the civil rights struggle. in fact, in 1935, just as this case was being filed. the naacp, its annual convention in his hometown of saint louis, where lawyers like charles houston, lauren miller, debated the question whether or not the organization should continue pursue litigation or whether strategy was hopeless. only the success or the failure of his case and others like it could resolve that debate. but gaines himself remained a symbol. everything about him had to be

correct. charles houston would chastise him during his graduate studies at the university of michigan for failing to keep his grades sufficiently high to meet naacp standards. but gaines was struggling financially, and he was working as a teacher in the school under the auspices of the new deal era national youth, earning only $25 a month. not even off to cover his expenses. his brother, george who had a job as a pullman porter, just about the best in the most stable a black man could have at the time, would periodically loan him ten or $15 a month just to meet his regular expenses and naacp ever sensitive to its lawyers being brought up on ethics charges, couldn't give him funds to meet his evident need, although it did secretly arrange for friends to give him a little cash to tide them over. gaines his job was to wait for

years for his case to be resolved just so that he could begin the education that would set him on his adult path in. he was already about 27 years old when the supreme court decided this case and after his case. after that, his case might drag for years more and, might wind up back in the supreme court again. before you get an answer as to whether he could study at the university of missouri's law school. lloyd gaines was a hero to community. across the country. he spoke on numerous occasions to church groups in others in saint louis, in kansas city, 1400 people came to see him speak kansas city on one occasion, and hundreds more were turned away. he delivered inspiring speeches, urging his fellow african-americans to push for excellence and equality. but he still needed money. he didn't like very much, and he eventually left university and

found himself working as a gas station attendant in kansas city. he didn't like that either. he thought the station was selling adulterated gas. so he eventually moved to chicago, where he stayed at the southside ymca before, moving rent free into a house was occupied by his fraternity brothers in alpha phi alpha. he told friends he'd found a good job at a department store and that things were looking up. and then one day he left his house to buy some stamps and never returned. the last of evidence that gaines us before disappearing is a letter to his mother. it's worth quoting a bid to capture a bit of his thoughts on everything that had happened to him. as for the publicity relative to the university case, gaines

wrote, i have found my race still likes to applaud, shake hands, pat me on the back and, say how great novel is, idea how a and socially important the case. but in there it ends often out of confines of the publicity columns. i'm just a man one who has fought and sacrificed to make this case possible, one who is still fighting and sacrificing almost the supreme sacrifice to see that it is a complete and lasting for 13 million --. no, just another man. sometimes i wish i would just a plain, ordinary man whose name no one recognized. those were among the last recorded thoughts of a test case. plaintiff, a person whose name was known across the country. a person trying to grapple with some of the costs and benefits

individual collective of getting a case into this courtroom. in 1938 and the question remains what to lloyd gaines. you justice kagan has already told you the answer. so i'll be frank and i don't know. i could review all the evidence but take on my word that it is inconclusive. some of the theories have been bandied about over the past eight decades seem fanciful. it's doubtful segregationists tracked him to his home in chicago and murdered him or bought off far too many for too many reasons to recount. for instance, his family and in the end, keep it lost track of him at the time of his disappearance. even close friends didn't know where he was living or that he was in chicago.

rumors that years later he was seen in mexico or that he sent a cryptic postcard from there years later. but these are just rumors. the evidence for all of this is always secondhand. a friend of a friend claimed to see him or years later. his mother, hazily, maybe receiving a postcard. mexico. but that postcard mysteriously disappeared disappeared, remembering back long after events, his former girlfriend claimed to have seen someone who of looked like him. pacing up and down in front of her house years after his disappearance. there's no evidence to support any of these theories. and they suspiciously depend on people remembering back years later trying explain something that can't be explained and something for which they have no evidence. it is possible gaines simply went into hiding, but recall

that he had no money. he never showed up for the department job that he had boasted about. how exactly would he have gone into hiding with no money? and why wouldn't even his brother or mother have ever heard of him again? for decades and decades, save for the suppose it cryptic postcard they supposedly from mexico, which somebody it nobody can find? no, no one ever heard from him again. again, there seems to be the need to put some explanation to the profound sense of loss and disappointment caused lloyd gaines disappearance. but some things just don't have explanation. accidents do. perhaps he was crossing the street and was hit by a car and his body wound up in the morgue in a major city where he knew no one, where there was almost no

one to come looking for him. and where people wouldn't even start looking for him until many months later. that's something accidental happened to gaines. it seems about as likely. and actually a lot more likely than the other explanation since they've been proffered for his disappearing case. and in any most of the proffered explanations, either are not supported by evidence or, frankly, seem quite unlikely to be. so we will probably never know what happened to lloyd gaines, but we can say something about the need to some explanation to something can't be explained for that need seems connected to the two things that were in wrapped up in his case pessimism and hope gaines disappeared. it was still unclear which of

these two things better describe racial politics of his time and which of them the naacp and its supporters should adopt in the short term gaines, his disappearance seemed to validate the pessimists and much of the need to explain his disappearance stems from the profound, disappointing bit of that moment in which pessimism seemed triumph over hope. of course, from our vantage point, we know that the evidence for hope would begin to accumulate the next decade and a half. no sooner had gaines, then another black lucille bluford appeared. applied to university of missouri school of journalism and had charles houston file another on her behalf. it would take a decade and more cases, but the university of missouri would eventually be desegregated. from our vantage point, we know that the acp would continue to file a court and we know that

the former ku klux klansman, who had been newly appointed to the supreme court, hugo, will become one of the most reliable defenders of minority rights on that. we know that brown versus board of education was only a decade and a half away. we know that a year, a half after that decision, sorry, a year and a half after brown a young, unknown named martin luther king jr would invoke the brown decision in his first sermon during the montgomery boyce bus boycott as a justified for that protest action and that brown would enable king and the boycotters to win their protest action. in the end because they later filed a lawsuit and got their case to the supreme court which decided their favor. we know that a decade after the montgomery bus boycott king and countless americans of all races

would help cement and place the civil rights act of 1964, which would allow racial minorities, women and other groups finally take their places in instead that had excluded them. we know the 64 act laid the groundwork, the passage of the 1965 hearts celler immigration, which removed the last vestiges of an immigration restrictionist regime where the federal government had actively nonwhite and particularly asian americans and into familiar present ushered in by the heart celler act, where people of various faiths, colors and ethnicities from across the world populate all ranks of american society society. but looking at all this from the perspective of 1939, no could see these things coming and gains as disappearance seemed to

seem to be one more entry on the un hopeful side of the ledger, something that produced an almost desperate need to explain. in fact, looking at the from the perspective of 2025, 86 years or so after gains, we might it appropriate to think once again about the choice of how to interpret racial politics during the time of a time of pessimism for race and democracy. after all, jane gaines to file his suit and maintain it at great personal cost in an era in which evidence for pessimism seems stronger than the evidence for hope. supreme court decisions hollowed out the promise of constitutional amendments and civil rights acts as mechanisms for promoting then the inclusion of minorities in institutions. that historically excluded them legal and constitutional

enactments that had been put in place to promote that inclusion had been repurposed as tools for the powerful to shape american society. their own ends. the presence of black people in institutions of higher learning in good jobs, in politics was something something to be questioned and explained as a departure from the expected normal state of things. few could imagine it then and indeed those in power could hardly imagine that highest profile military officer in the country could be african-american. that high ranking officers of the navy coast guard and pentagon could be women. and that the librarian of congress could be a black woman. and many still have trouble imagining such things things.

authoritarian governments reigned over an entire section the country. when gaines brought his where they actively suppressed free voting free speech free thought and free democratic institu tions. these governments took measures to suppress lawyers who represented unpopped biller closets, subjecting to investigations and demands that would only increase over time. the government. even during the new deal, had in many ways thrown its considerable behind the forces of racial regression in limiting the presence racial minorities in activities in which they could at best advance themselves. the presence of the nation's long history of struggle for and against equality was something to be kept out of the history books at that time, out of the schools and as much as possible, erased from the nation's

collective. but amid all that, some people dared to hope when some added to other attitude might have seemed more realistic and acted on that hope. but i think i like to give the last word on all of this. lloyd gaines himself in that last missive that he sent to his mother before he disappeared. it was clearly letter written by a person who had suffered a lot and at times wondered whether it was all it. but it was also a letter written by a person who took pride in the cause to which he had enlisted. it has been much discussed by scholars and journalists over the years. i think, however, that the one the way one reads that letter is shaped by the way one sees the larger historical moment and indeed how one sees the present moment. in what way? in which the reader encounters the letter. some have read it.

a cry of despair, reading it. i don't see that. rather, i see someone took pride in working towards. he called, quote, a complete, lasting success for 13 million --. even though he knew that the work had cost him and would continue to cost him dearly. i see as being written by a person who, for whatever untimely fate he suffered, was contemplating that it would. he would re-enlist in the politics of hope. amid all the evidence of pessimism. i see it just like others have seen in the past. as a way to our present supposedly pessimist moment. as much as it is a way to read the past. gaines was enlisting on the side of hope in a deeply pessimistic

era, and he wanted others to follow his example. thanks very much.