Lloyd Lionel Gaines (1911—disappeared March 19, 1939) was the central figure in Gaines v. Canada (1938), one of the most important court cases in the U.S. civil rights movement in the 1930s.
Gaines was a valedictorian at Vashon High School and graduated with honors from Lincoln University in Jefferson City, Missouri, with a Bachelor's degree in history. When he applied in 1936 for admission to the Law School at the University of Missouri, he was rejected. In April, the university denied his admission on grounds of race. Missouri's policy was to pay the expenses for education of such black students out of state.
Gaines and his lawyer, Charles Hamilton Houston, took their case to court. After the Boone County court and Missouri Supreme Court both ruled in favor of the university, they proceeded to the United States Supreme Court. Gaines v. Canada was argued on November 9, 1938. It was the most important segregation case since Plessy v. Ferguson (1896).
Sy Woodson Canada was the registrar at the University of Missouri School of Law then. In a 1978 interview for National Public Radio, the 80-year-old Canada revealed that his superiors at the University had instructed him to deny admission to Gaines. Canada recalled that Gaines met all the admissions requirements "except he was colored."
On December 12, 1938, the Supreme Court, in a 6-2 decision, ordered the State of Missouri either to admit Gaines to the University of Missouri or provide another school of equal stature within the state borders. Gaines never got to attend law school, but his case articulated an important rule of law in the sequence of NAACP cases leading to the eventual desegregation order: that any academic program that a state provided to whites had to have an equivalent available to blacks.
Gaines was a member of the fraternity Alpha Phi Alpha. On the night of March 19, 1939, Gaines left the fraternity house in Chicago, Illinois, telling others he was going out to buy stamps. He was never seen again.