[Keona Ervin] Good evening, everybody.
Thanks for coming.
My name is Keona Ervin, I'm an assistant Professor of history and faculty affiliate
of Black Studies here at MU.
We're delighted that Dr. James Endersby will give the last lecture of the spring 2017 season
of the African American Experience in Missouri.
The series is a collaboration of the State Historical Society of Missouri's Center
for Missouri Studies and the University of Missouri's Division of Inclusion, Diversity,
and Equity.
The Lecture Series aims to explore the history of black Americans in Missouri from the earliest
period of statehood to the present.
Dr. Gary Kremer, who is the Executive Director of the State Historical Society, and I curate
the series.
So over the course of now three seasons, we've hosted nine top scholars in the field who
have helped us to examine the lives of African Americans in Missouri's past, and we're happy
to report that the lectures are now available for viewing.
You can access them on the Lecture Series home page. Before I introduce our speaker,
allow me first to thank you all for supporting the series.
Many of you have actually been with us since we first began this endeavor in February 2016.
So to Interim Chancellor Hank Foley; Dr. Kevin McDonald and Noor Azizan-Gardner of Inclusion, Diversity, and Equity
at MU; Mary Ellen Lohmann, Alexandra Waetjen, and Wendy Wagner of the State Historical Society;
to Ashley Schwab of University Events; Susan Camren of the Academic Support Center; and
Eric Doyle Wright of MU Diversity; thank you for making the series a success.
Now, our speaker for this evening is Dr. James W. Endersby, an Associate Professor of political
science.
He has been with the department since 1991.
He received his Ph.D. in 1990 from the University of Texas and specializes in American political
behavior, specifically voting and elections, formal political theory, and research methods.
His work has appeared in the Journal of Politics, Electoral Studies, Political Communication,
and Social Science Quarterly. With his colleague, Dr. William T. Horner who is a teaching Professor
of political science at the University of Missouri,
he wrote "Lloyd Gaines and the Fight to End Segregation," which is published by
the University of Missouri Press.
It is the first book to focus entirely on the Gaines case and the vital role played
by the NAACP and its lawyers, who advanced a concerted strategy to produce political
change.
This book uncovers an important step toward the broad acceptance of the principle that
racial segregation is inherently unequal.
The inaugural volume in the series, Studies in Constitutional Democracy, sponsored by
the Kinder Institute on Constitutional Democracy.
The book, according to one reviewer, makes a significant contribution to the literature
examining a largely unknown, but critically important phase of the Civil Rights movement.
Please note, finally, that Dr. Endersby will sign copies of his book after our question
and answer period.
Let's welcome him.
[Applause]
[James Endersby] Thank you Keona, thank you
all for coming here today.
I really appreciated it on a gray and maybe rainy day before we're all ending here.
Thank you all for being here.
I'd like to thank the folks at the State Historical Society of Missouri and the Center for Missouri
Studies and the Mizzou Division on Inclusivity, Diversity, and Equity for the opportunity
to visit with you here today and in particular I'd like to thank Mary Ellen Lohmann and Alex
Waetjen for coordinating behind the scenes, this event to get me here, and so forth.
The State Historical Society is a great resource for research on Missouri history, and I have
spent many, many hours in the archives of the State Historical Society.
We're lucky to have such a fine public institution devoted to preserving the history of our state
here.
So it's a pleasure today to speak with you regarding the circumstances surrounding the
landmark U.S. Supreme Court case of Missouri ex rel.
Gaines v. Canada.
One of the most important Supreme Court cases involving the equal opportunity in education
and arguably the most important case, with the exception of Brown v. Board of Education,
is the 1938 U.S. Supreme Court case, a Missouri ex rel.
Gaines v. Canada and the Board of Curators of the University of Missouri.
The decision was the first time the United States Supreme Court applied the federal constitutional
protections of equal protection of the laws to education.
It was the first step in the destruction of what was then legal racial segregation in
education.
The Gaines litigation could have led to a decision such as Brown that ruled that separate
educational facilities are inherently unequal.
Now, as most of you know, racial segregation occurred in much of the nation and particularly
in the South and within the state of Missouri and although the 14th amendment to the U.S.
Constitution, ratified after the Civil War, guaranteed equal protection of the laws to
all U.S. citizens, the U.S. Supreme Court case of 1896, Plessy v. Ferguson, upheld racial
segregation in states through what became known as the separate but equal doctrine.
Segregation was legally protected within a state, just as long as the segregated facilities
for blacks were of substantially the same quality as those for whites.
But of course, separate facilities were never equal.
Within the state of Missouri, separate educational facilities were provided for white and black
students and segregated facilities went all the way from primary education up to institutions
of higher learning.
Founded in 1909, the NAACP was dedicated to pursuing Civil Rights for black Americans.
The Executive Director of the NAACP, Walter White, shown here on the far left, and next
to him is Charles Houston.
Walter White embarked on a number of efforts to improve the status of African Americans,
including Congressional lobbying on behalf of an anti-lynching law.
In the organization, Roy Wilkins led the public relations activity of the NAACP.
He was the editor of The Crisis, the in house magazine, and he coordinated information for
numerous black newspapers across the country.
The black press served as an important and vocal supporter of NAACP legal activity.
Although raised in Minnesota, Wilkins was born in St. Louis and worked at The Call,
the influential back newspaper in Kansas City, founded by Chester Franklin.
We had a lot of Missouri ties.
In the 1920s, the NAACP received a grant from the Garland Fund, the American fund for public
service, allowing the organization to pursue a legal agenda to promote Civil Rights.
One of its early legal strategists, a white northeastern lawyer named Nathan Margold,
prepared a comprehensive plan for overcoming the doctrine of separate but equal and eliminating
racial segregation in the United States.
The Margold report offered plans for overcoming segregation and many aspects of American life,
including access to various public facilities and in primary and secondary education.
While the report mentions higher education, it was not a priority for Margold.
The NAACP suffered almost perpetually from financial difficulties and it was clear when
the Margold report was published that the organization did not have the resources, the
funds, to pursue such a wide legal agenda.
In the early 1930s, a brilliant legal mind took over as leader of the NAACP's litigation
efforts.
Charles Hamilton Houston, pictured here standing up, who would later become known as the man
who killed Jim Crow.
Houston was a graduate of Harvard Law School where he served as the first black member
of the law review.
This is long before our previous President.
He was the very first.
He went on to be both a professor and Dean at the Howard University School of Law.
Houston's ideas were similar to Margold's, but Houston was particularly interested in
pursuing desegregation of higher education.
There were many reasons for this.
The belief that the climate would be more liberal and accepting in the world of higher
education.
The belief that the general population would simply be less interested and then, therefore,
less threatened by desegregation and higher education.
And the belief that higher education would lead to better paying jobs which, in turn,
would lead to more opportunities for black Americans.
And I think it's also the case that Houston was particularly interested in law, professional
education, going to law school, because I think, he doesn't write about this, but I
think he also thinks that judges are going to be more receptive to this.
An African American student who wants to go into law comes before a judge and a judge
is going to think, that's a good career choice is going into the law.
All state universities, all public universities, state affiliated universities within Missouri
were for white students only with the exception of the poorly funded Lincoln University in
Jefferson City, which was open to black students only.
Black Missourians had no opportunities for graduate and professional education within
the State of Missouri.
None.
Nothing was available in the State of Missouri.
Missouri, we should note, was an innovator in the area of racial segregation.
Often good intentions led to the perpetuation of racial segregation.
For instance, the Lincoln Institute was established through contributions from the 62nd and 65th
colored infantry from the Civil War as a means to provide education for black college students.
The State of Missouri later took over the institute, renamed it Lincoln University,
and made it the state's only college for black students.
Just as an aside, Harris Stowe is also known as an HBC in Missouri, but Stowe College,
which at that time was the black part of what would become Harris Stowe, was a college for
the City of St. Louis, so for education for teachers only in the City of St. Louis.
So it wasn't a state university.
State legislation sponsored by Representative Walthall Moore, the first African-American
legislator, offered black students tuition scholarships to attend schools out of state
for programs offered in white only institutions, but unavailable for black students in Missouri.
The out of state tuition scholarship program provided black citizens with an opportunity for graduate
and professional education, while at the same time allowing state colleges to remain white
only.
Of course, the state never adequately funded or administered the out of state tuition program.
Charles Houston argued that out of state scholarships made for a stronger legal argument that separate,
but equal, was violated as states like Missouri, with out of state tuition scholarships, operated
as separate and nothing for blacks.
So the argument could be made much better.
Litigation would be less complicated than in comparing the relative quality of black
and white institutions within the state.
An early effort by the NAACP led by Charles Houston and his student from Harvard, excuse
me, from Howard, one of his students from Howard, Thurgood Marshall, who is standing
here, was a 1935 case involving the University of Maryland.
A lawsuit was filed on behalf of Donald Gaines Murray, and the Gaines is coincidence, there's
no relation between the two.
The suit was for Donald Gaines Murray against the university's law school in the case of
Murray v. Pearson.
Like Missouri, Maryland offered black students financial assistance to attend school out
of state.
And in this photo, that's Thurgood Marshall, and of course Marshall would go on and get
much more prominence than his mentor, Charles Houston, but Houston thought he was a great
person.
He actually brought him into the NAACP and Marshall was very thankful he actually got
a good job coming straight out of law school, so he would also become, of course, the first
African American justice of the U.S. Supreme Court.
Well, in this case of Murray v. Pearson, the NAACP was successful, winning a decision,
ordering Murray's admission to law school.
The state of Maryland capitulated and admitted Murray to the University of Maryland School
of Law.
This was an important victory, but it was limited to the state of Maryland.
There could be no appeal to the United States Supreme Court where a decision in Murray's
favor would have established an important federal precedent for the whole nation.
So Houston and others in the NAACP sought another case that would lead them to the United
States Supreme Court.
Missouri was a border state.
It had large educated black communities in St. Louis and Kansas City.
There was only one state institution of higher learning that black Missourians could attend.
That's the relatively small Lincoln University in Jefferson City.
In the State of Missouri, Houston found an ally in St. Louis attorney Sidney Redmond,
he's pictured here on the far right.
Redmond was a black lawyer who, like Houston, was a Harvard Law School graduate.
He was the son of a prominent attorney, both of them came from families where their fathers
were prominent attorneys.
Redmond was also a workaholic.
He was devoted to Civil Rights litigation and he was a marvelous attorney who wanted
to get every detail right.
Really a perfectionist, like Houston.
Redmond was a leader of the NAACP and a key organizer of the Mound City Bar Association
and the National Bar Associations.
They were organizations created specifically for black attorneys, because the American
Bar Association would not admit black attorneys at this time.
Redmond's law partner, Henry Espy, who also led the St. Louis NAACP, worked with Redmond
in the efforts to investigate and later to litigate against the University of Missouri.
Espy was a Howard Law School student.
He knew Charles Houston at Howard University.
To point out the obvious, none of these black attorneys was actually educated within the
state of Missouri, because you couldn't be.
You couldn't get education as an attorney within the state of Missouri.
None of them were originally from Missouri.
Redmond was from Mississippi.
Houston was from Washington, D.C. Espy was from Florida.
Redmond and Espy and the other attorneys had moved to and practiced in the City of St. Louis.
So Redmond accepted the job of investigating the University of Missouri and began an effort
to find a client to file a lawsuit, a test case against the University of Missouri.
He was very careful to try to avoid the perception that he was soliciting clients, which was
something that the University of Missouri accused him of throughout this entire process.
According to Redmond, the university was seeking to get him disbarred for seeking a client.
Different than the current day.
Redmond had descended from this prominent family in Mississippi, and there were a series
of controversies with his father and with him.
His father was disbarred for a while and came back and Redmond was also either going to
be disbarred or perhaps even sent to jail, and one of the conditions was we'll leave
and you your father alone if you just leave the state.
Redmond originally went to Illinois and then moved to St. Louis.
So they're seeking a client.
Lloyd Gaines was a graduate Sean high school in St. Louis and of Lincoln University.
He graduated from Lincoln with honors in 1935 and was the senior class president.
Gaines wanted to go to law school, and along with several other perspective clients, he
sought the help of the NAACP in making a case to attend the University of Missouri's Law
School.
On the advice of some of his teachers, Lloyd Gaines sought out Sidney Redmond in St. Louis
and had a meeting with the attorney.
With Redmond's recommendations, Gaines requested a catalog and an application from the University
of Missouri registrar, Silas Woodson Canada.
Gaines was a strong candidate academically, and if he were rejected by the University
of Missouri, it could be argued that he was rejected on account of ethnicity or race and
nothing else.
So Gaines application was received by the University of Missouri.
So far, so good.
However, and this is Middlebush, however, when the university received his transcript
from Lincoln University, a school for blacks only, the registrar's office knew that he
was black.
And this is how segregation was started.
Somehow I've lost Canada there.
This is how segregation in higher education was enforced.
An applicant from a black high school or a black college, such as Lincoln University,
would be identified at that point and miraculously, a student from a black high school or from
Lincoln University wouldn't meet the eligibility requirements, so they simply wouldn't be admitted.
They wouldn't be denied on the basis of race, but they wouldn't be admitted because they
had gone to a black high school or, in the case of graduate education, to a black college.
So Frederick Middlebush, which is the political scientist behind me, was the newly named President
of the University of Missouri.
And I'm a little disappointed that, as a political scientist he didn't take a more proactive
position on this issue.
I found no written record where Middlebush actually took any position on segregation
or on Gaines's application.
What happened is that registrar Canada, who is in the back here, he's right back here,
looking at the front screen, he's right back there, this is Frederick Middlebush right
in the middle.
So what would happen is that Canada would forward the correspondence on to Frederick
Middlebush, who was the President of the university, who would then forward it on to the Board
of Curators or university council who would then write a response, get it back to Middlebush
who, in turn, would pass it back to Canada so Middlebush didn't have his fingers on anything
regarding the Gaines' case.
It would just all go through his office.
So initially, the University of Missouri just sat on the application of Lloyd Gaines, making
no decision.
And as mandated by law, Lincoln University informed Lloyd Gaines of the scholarship opportunities
available to him to study law out of state.
In September of 1935, Gaines formally asked Charles Houston and the NAACP to serve as
his legal counsel.
So a suit was filed asking the Boone County Circuit Court to compel the university to
admit Lloyd Gaines in January of 1936.
Gaines and the NAACP lawyers had a difficult case, but they decided to pursue it.
Missouri's position was strongly in defense of racial segregation, and that led to a very
unusual action.
The Board of Curators, which is a political organization, got involved.
That's usually the problem with the university.
I don't want to speak about current events, but that's oftentimes a problem is when the
Board of Curators gets involved.
This is the Board of Curators at the time that Lloyd Gaines actually made his initial
attempt to get admitted.
The President of the university at that time was Walter Williams, the famous journalism
and created the journalism school.
As you can see here in the school, Walter Williams is not doing too well.
He passes away during the time and Frederick Middlebush, seated over here, makes the final
decisions.
He's actually the President at the time that a decision is made on Gaines's application.
But what happens in March of 1936 is that the Board of Curators votes to deny Lloyd
Gaines' admission.
The University of Missouri Board of Curators, specifically passed a motion, and I am reading
it, "be it resolved that the application of said Lloyd L. Gaines be and is here by
rejected and denied and the registrar, a committee on entrants, should be instructed accordingly."
The NAACP attorneys were delighted.
In addition to identifying Gaines by name, so there's no doubt, they identify him by
name, the resolution in another section gives a clear reason for the rejection.
He was, and again, I am quoting, a colored student.
The issue was now squarely on racial segregation.
So in April, Houston and Redmond filed another suit in Boone County.
The petition claimed only that Gaines was a qualified Missouri taxpayer; that he met
the requirements for admission; and so the registrar, Silas Woodson Canada, should be
compelled to admit him to the university.
To Redmond, Houston wrote and emphasized, the issue is now squarely on the race question.
But in drafting the petition, do so without reference to color and make them plead color
in the answer.
This will give us the opportunity to challenge inequalities and raise the whole question
of equal provisions.
So the case then goes to trial in the Boone County circuit courtroom of Judge Walter Dinwiddie
in July of 1936 before a gallery filled with whites, blacks, university students, farmers,
and people from the City of Columbia.
Houston later expressed surprise that the Court proceedings were not segregated.
Lawyers for both sides at that time at the same table.
The audience was mixed.
Even the water fountain and the restrooms were used by both blacks and whites.
And I should emphasize at this time that litigating this case was particularly difficult for Gaines
and his counsel.
There were no white lawyers who were going to challenge the university and the state.
Redmond and the law offices were in St. Louis.
Traveling from St. Louis to Columbia was difficult.
This was the mid-1930s.
The first time that Houston met with Judge Dinwiddie in Columbia, he had to drive through
a snowstorm.
Typical Missouri weather.
He comes in January and there's a snowstorm.
For the Circuit Court trial that I'm talking about here now, there was a heat wave and
it hit 105 degrees and it was outside.
Inside a crowded courtroom it was probably a lot hotter than that.
Typical Missouri weather that Houston was confronting, in addition to all of this.
In addition, there was no place for a black visitor to spend the night in Columbia.
You really couldn't expect Harvard educated attorneys to sleep on a dirt floor or in sharp
end.
Likewise, in Jefferson City, an African American could not spend the night at any establishment.
In fact, could not eat out at any establishment in Jefferson City, except at the cafeteria
at Lincoln University, and even black members of the legislature had to eat at Lincoln University,
because they would not be served in a white restaurant in the state capitol.
Central Missouri and Columbia in particular were also known for lynching.
This was a discussion of the NAACP attorneys before they pursued the trial, too.
Not that many years before, James Scott, a university employee, was lynched at the Stewart
road bridge by a mob that included both prominent towns folk and university students.
So this was a difficult situation for the NAACP attorneys and for Lloyd Gaines.
Well, at the Circuit Court trial, prominent Kansas City attorney William Sloan Hogsett,
the university's lead counsel, argued not that Lincoln was inferior, but actually that
Lincoln University was an excellent quality.
In fact, equal to or better than the University of Missouri.
And the trial transcript, if you read it, sounds like a very poorly written comedy and
one might wonder why anyone would wanted to go to the University of Missouri, because
the position is taken by the university staff and the university administration, it's really
not a very good school.
There's really no reason that you would want to come.
In fact, on the stand, William Masterson, the Dean of the University of Missouri Law
School, argued just as perversely that there was no particular advantage for people wanting
to practice law in Missouri, like Lloyd Gaines.
There was no particular advantage to attend the University of Missouri's Law School, and
you'd learn about Missouri law just as much or maybe even better by going to school in
Illinois or Kansas.
It would be much better than actually going here.
In spite of all of these positions, Judge Dinwiddie ruled against Gaines with no opinion
and the case was appealed to the Missouri Supreme Court, the state Supreme Court.
Things did not go well for the NAACP or Gaines in Jefferson City, either.
The unanimous opinion announced in December of 1937 and written by Judge William Frank,
the Chief Justice at the time, took the view that the, and I'm quoting again, "the established
public policy of the state has been and now is to segregate the white and Negro races
for the purposes of education in common schools and high schools of the state."
Though there was no constitutional mandate for segregation in higher education, and I'm
reading from it the Court's opinion again, the legislature has the authority to enact
laws for providing such education.
The Court also noted a lengthy legislative history of statutes regarding Lincoln University
as an institution for African Americans in order to show, and again, from the court case,
to show a clear intention on the part of the legislature to separate the white and Negro
races for the purposes of higher education.
So they lose at the Missouri Supreme Court, but loss at the Missouri Supreme Court was
not disappointing to Charles Houston.
It offered him the opportunity that he most wanted.
Houston wanted a decision that would apply nationally, not just in Missouri.
So the United States Supreme Court was the planned venue for the application of the equal
protection clause of the 14th amendment all along.
Houston and Redmond prepared the appeal for the U.S. Supreme Court.
Walter White and others at the NAACP were pessimistic that the United States Supreme
Court would even hear the case.
It is their option.
They have to grant a writ.
They didn't think it was going to happen.
Houston was confident and he was ultimately correct, but the NAACP legal defense had another
problem: They had originally received this grant from the Garland fund back in the 1920s.
We've gone to the 1930s.
And of course what's occurring in the 1930s?
The depression.
They were bust.
There was no additional money.
By the time the U.S., the appeal to the United States Supreme Court in the Gaines case, there
was no money for legal defense left.
Nothing.
Walter White and Roy Wilkins emphasized other priorities, in particular, they pushing for congressional
passage of anti lynching legislation, and they would ultimately not succeed at that
by the way.
The organization made it difficult for Houston to justify pursuing the case.
In fact, actually, if you read the correspondence, not even particularly nice.
They really sort of make Charles Houston grovel.
He has to go back to Nathan Margold and others to get recommendations to pursue the case,
because they really don't think the Supreme Court will even hear the case, let alone will
they ever win.
But Charles Houston perseveres and his confidence is rewarded.
The Supreme Court of the United States, under Chief Justice Charles Evan Hughes, issues
a writ of certiorari and it seems clear during the oral arguments before the Supreme Court
that several of the justices were sympathetic to Gaines and to the arguments of the NAACP
and in fact, the United States Supreme Court ruled very quickly, the oral arguments took
place in November of 1938, November, and the court issues its decision on December the
12th.
That's really fast.
By a wide margin, six to two, the Court rules in Gaines' favor.
In the majority opinion, Chief Justice Charles Evan Hughes articulated the clear violation
of quality or equal protection within the state.
So the Supreme Court rules, "By the operation of the laws of Missouri, a privilege has been
created for white law students, which is denied to Negroes by reason of their race.
The white resident is afforded legal education within the state.
The Negro resident, having the same qualifications, is refused it there and must go outside the
state to obtain it.
That is a denial of the equality of the legal right to the enjoyment of the privilege which
the state has set up and the provision for the payment of tuition fees in another state
does not remove this discrimination."
So the court, in its decision, made the first clear application of the 14th amendment's
equal protection clause to the state.
It is a landmark decision.
It was the first time that that happens.
The court's emphasis was now and would continue to be on equality of opportunity.
The Court, however, did not demand that Gaines be admitted to the University of Missouri.
Gaines was entitled to admission at a law school at MU or at a substantially equal alternative
for black students within the state.
But there was no alternative, so it seems clear to me that the Supreme Court assumed
that Missouri would admit Lloyd Gaines.
That wouldn't happen.
James McReynolds wrote a scathing descent that the decision for integration would, and
I am quoting, "damnify both races.
The dissent strongly supported a separate but equal philosophy, he's joined in that
with Pierce Butler, so there's certainly dissent that occurs.
Although the Supreme Court makes its decision, it was unclear what Lloyd Gaines should actually
do.
The Supreme Court decision was three and a half years after Gaines first applies for
admission to Missouri Law School.
Gaines seems no closer to a law degree now than at the time of his application.
Being a Civil Rights hero does not pay the bills.
He finagled an anonymous loan through the NAACP in order to attend graduate school in
Economics at the University of Michigan and after that Gaines worked a series of odd jobs
in St. Louis, including pumping gas.
He remained, however, a recognized figure in the black community.
Following the Supreme Court decision, Gaines gave speeches to large audiences.
There were over a thousand people, a thousand spectators in the YMCA in St. Louis.
He went to Kansas City, and at the Centennial church on Woodland Avenue in Kansas City he
spoke to another crowd that exceeded a thousand folks, so he also gave speeches in other communities.
He was prominent.
People knew who he was.
After his visit to Kansas City, he boarded a train for Chicago at Union Station with
the hope of finding employment in Chicago.
In March of 1939, about three months after the United States Supreme Court decision,
Gaines mails a long letter to his mother.
In the letter to his mother, Gaines wrote that he had traveled to Chicago, hoping to
find it possible to make my own way.
He explains that his conscience prevents him from continuing to work in St. Louis.
He feels that his fame is being used to rip people off by selling gas, regular gas at
ethyl prices and so forth.
But he has difficulty finding another job in Chicago.
And then Gaines writes to his mother about his role in the landmark court decision.
And this is worth reading to you, I think.
So Lloyd Gaines writes to his mother, "as for my publicity relative to the university
case, I have found that my race likes to applaud, shake hands, pat me on the back, and say how
great and noble is the idea, how historical and socially important the case, but … and
there it ends.
Off and out of the confines of the publicity columns, I am just a man.
Not one who has fought and sacrificed to make the case possible.
One who is still fighting and sacrificing almost the supreme sacrifice to see that as
a complete and lasting success for 13 million Negroes.
No.
Just another man.
Sometimes I wish I were just a plain ordinary man whose name no one recognized.
And Gaines closes the letter to his mother this way.
Should I forget to write for a time, don't worry about it.
I can look after myself okay.
As ever, Lloyd."
Meanwhile, the State of Missouri prepares its own response to the United States Supreme
Court decision.
Rather than integrating the student body at the University of Missouri, the state is done
an alternative to meet the conditions set by the Supreme Court.
Through the introduction and passage of the John Taylor bill, this is John Taylor here,
a Representative in the statehouse.
The state gave Lincoln University the authority to create new graduate and professional programs
on demand.
Thus, a new black only Law School could be organized as an extension of Lincoln University
immediately.
The Taylor bill was signed into law in May of 1939.
That's just five months after the decision.
Right?
Signed into law in May of 1939 and the state expected the Lincoln Board of Curators to
have a new black law school up and running in time for Gaines to enroll in September.
And sometimes the state bureaucracy can move quickly.
There was no time to construct a new building or to find sufficient room on the Jefferson
City campus.
So the Lincoln Law School took over the large vacant Poro building in St. Louis.
The Poro building was available since the beauty products empire and entrepreneur, Annie
Malone, moved her business, coincidentally, to Chicago.
Annie Malone was quite a successful entrepreneur.
Poro was a huge product line at the time.
In fact, it did more than just sell beauty products to African American women, but it
trained all kinds of things: How to become a better woman, how to improve yourself, and
so forth.
One of her employees was Madam CJ Walker who took over part of the business and became
even more successful after Annie Malone.
So here's the building.
Now a new library is acquired from donations.
And a black, a new black faculty was hired.
The Dean of the Lincoln Law School, much to Charles Houston's disgust, was William Taylor,
who was his own replacement as Dean at Howard University, at the Howard University Law School.
And just as an aside, I should note that Houston was passionate and brilliant in all of his
writings and there's a voluminous correspondence.
The only time that he ever really loses it is when he talks about William Taylor.
It's clear that Houston felt betrayed by his former colleague who comes and takes over
Lincoln Law School.
The new Lincoln faculty were, in addition to Taylor, the new Lincoln faculty were recent
graduates of Howard Law School, students that had worked with Houston.
The state was clearly trying to put Houston and the NAACP in a difficult position.
The Missouri Supreme Court remanded the case back to the Circuit Court with the expectations,
it could be assumed, to rule that Lloyd Gaines could attend the equal Lincoln Law School.
So Houston and Redmond responded by organizing a new case that the hastily created Lincoln
Law School was not substantially equal to the University of Missouri Law School.
That is, it did not have equal funding, equal staffing, equal resources, and so forth.
And just as a reminder, that landmark case of Brown v. Board of Education was actually
two Supreme Court decisions.
The first one ruled that segregation is inherently unequal and violates the 14th amendment.
The second case demanded the enforcement of the first with all deliberate speed.
And in Gaines, we see the NAACP lawyers engaged in a strategy just like that.
They have won the first case, which applies equal protection to the States.
Now they need a second state to require the University of Missouri to enforce that.
The black community in St. Louis was divided about how to respond to the creation of Law School. Lincoln
On one hand, the creation of Lincoln law was a maintenance of racial segregation.
It's a Jim Crow institution.
And it appears an inferior alternative to black admission to the state's flagship university.
Picket lines were organized by the colored clerk circle, which was an organization in
St. Louis created to pressure for jobs in St. Louis, in the St. Louis area.
The goal was shop where you work.
If no one will employ a black worker, then you shouldn't shop there.
And they were successful in that picketing of those businesses.
And so they organized picketing of Lincoln law, and that continued for several months.
So that's the one side.
On the other side, Lincoln law provides an inexpensive opportunity for black Missourians
to obtain a legal education.
About 30 students enrolled in the first class and more would follow.
In fact, one member of the second class, shown here, is Margaret Bush or later Margaret Bush
Wilson.
After receiving her Lincoln law degree, she would head a legal firm in St. Louis for four
decades.
She would become influential in the case of Shelly v. Kremer in 1948, which would outlaw
restrictive covenants.
She would later chair and serve nine terms on the NAACP board of directors.
So there were opportunities for black Missourians to go to Lincoln law, too.
On behalf of Gaines, Houston, Redmond, and Espy entered the second phase of litigation
to show that the segregated Law School did not meet the standards of equal protection
established by the U.S. Supreme Court.
They took depositions.
William Taylor and others in St. Louis, in October of 1939.
After the hearing where the depositions were taken, William Hogsett and the university
attorneys expressed the desire to depose or to question Lloyd Gaines again, noting that
he wasn't present at this hearing and, of course, Gaines had left the state, first to
Michigan, then to Chicago.
So the university counsel wanted to know whether Gaines was truly a Missouri resident and whether
he really wanted to attend Law School at MU after all.
First, does he have standing?
And does he really want to pursue this case?
We want to question him.
Over four years had now passed since Lloyd Gaines' original application.
And so Houston and Redmond say, we'll contact our client and get back to you.
Well, remember the Lloyd Gaines letter to his mother in March of 1939?
A few days after writing that letter, Gaines was rooming temporarily at a fraternity house
in Chicago.
On a rainy midday in March in Chicago, Lloyd Gaines stepped out telling the housekeeper
that he would be back, but he was going to go buy some stamps.
And that's it.
He never returned.
The crucial litigant in the first major Civil Rights case, Lloyd Gaines, disappeared.
He left one day.
He left his bags at his fraternity house.
He was just gone.
Redmond and the other attorneys made every effort to locate Gaines by contacting those
who knew him.
They contacted black leaders.
There were papers in the black press across the country that printed notices like the
one that's shown here, photos and headlines asking "where is Lloyd Gaines?"
And you can see this it one is in June of 1941, long after the case.
There was still an effort to try to find out what happened to him.
And we discussed more in the book, but the short version is that Gaines disappeared without
a trace.
By New Year's in 1940, Houston and Redmond admitted that they could not locate their
client and the Gaines case was dismissed in the Circuit Court of Boone County.
And of course, that's not the end of the legal efforts promoting desegregation.
Charles Houston and Sidney Redmond picked up another case in Missouri, that of Lucille
Bluford, who was a journalist for The Call in Kansas City and training ground for Roy
Wilkins, who led the public relations for the NAACP.
And he would later become the director after Walter White left.
Houston actually thought that the Bluford case was stronger than the case for Gaines
and that she was a better witness on the stand than Lloyd Gaines was.
And at one point, the university actually admitted Lucille Bluford.
Her undergraduate degree was from the University of Kansas.
So when the transcripts came in, it was not obvious that she was a black applicant.
So she was actually admitted.
She went to go pick up her registration cards at Jesse Hall just a few blocks away from
here and she was pulled out of the administration building, Jesse Hall, and escorted to registrar
Canada's office and then Cy Canada read a statement from the Board of Curators basically
indicating that no black student would be allowed to enroll at the university.
Bluford continued to apply and file lawsuits with Houston, Redmond, and other attorneys
in the Kansas City area.
And Ms. Lucille was known for her determination.
She did not give up.
One of the cases in the litigation was a civil case against Cy Canada in Federal District
Court.
There were a number of cases, but Houston and Redmond would not find success in the
Bluford cases.
I may come back to that point if you want to ask more about that.
Other NAACP cases would reach the Supreme Court including Sipuel, McLaurin and Sweatt,
however the University of Missouri remained close to black students through all this time.
It was not until 1950 that Sidney Redmond and Henry Espy, after Houston had gone, represented
three litigants, Gus Regel, who is shown in the photos here at the time he was a student
and much old here with he comes back to visit the MU campus.
Represented three litigants, Gus Regel, Elmer Bell Jr., and George Everett Horn, and that's
the time that MU would finally admit black students.
William Hogsett and the university attorneys would ask for a declaratory judgment in the
Cole county Circuit Court and Regel and the other two other two black students would be
admitted to the University of Missouri for classes beginning in the fall semester of
1950.
15 years of Lloyd Gaines originally applied.
Mizzou and then Rolla, which was then a branch of the University of Missouri, were now integrated.
So the Gaines case touches many lives and it continues to do so.
In recent events throughout the country and in recent events even at the University of
Missouri, echoes from the Gaines' case continue to reverberate.
And with that, I think I'll end and open up for questions.
Thank you very much.
[Applause]
[Keona Ervin]Ok we have some time for questions
and comments.
I'll bring the mic to you.
[Audience Member] So you really found no word at all from Middlebush?
Because I remember many years ago when I started working as a librarian at Mizzou being over
at the archives and looking at some of the files of that case and I thought I saw a letter
maybe.
But it's been a long time, but I thought I saw a letter from Middlebush kind of saying
the people of Missouri are not ready for this, blah blah blah.
[James Endersby] No.
He's always quoting university counsel or the board, and when he receives the things,
he writes a little note to Canada and says, please forward this to William Hogsett.
Particularly because the case started when Middlebush was a new President, I'm sort of
filling in the blanks.
I think in the beginning of the case, he didn't want to get too involved.
He's basically an interim, and why would you want to be an interim and take strong positions
on this?
I think that was probably the case in the early stages.
Why he didn't have more of an input in the later stages, I do not know.
[Audience Member] So you mentioned the Brown ii decision with desegregation happening with
all deliberate speed.
So do you think the creation of Lincoln law was a result of that, or was it like, kind
of like an excuse?
[James Endersby] It seems clear that through the Taylor bill that the creation of Lincoln
law was to try to get around integration.
Try to avoid integration within the state of Missouri by creating another law school.
And then what that also led, when the Taylor bill said any time there was demand for a
new program that Lincoln law would have to create a new program.
So one of the reasons why they went to Lucille Bluford and to a number of other litigants,
there were others besides these, they were always pressing for a program that did not
exist.
Lucille Bluford asked to go into the Graduate School in journalism at the University of
Missouri, because there was no Graduate School in journalism at Lincoln University.
So the legislature put a lot of pressure on Lincoln.
You created this Law School.
Now you need to create a graduate program in journalism, and at the time, Sherman Scruggs,
who was the President of Lincoln, said we don't have the time and the money.
Ultimately, what happened was the graduate program at the University of Missouri was
closed down to avoid admitting Lucille Bluford until a Lincoln University graduate program
was created, and at that point it came back up.
Now the official explanation was, it was during World War II, there weren't as many applicants
so we're just going to close down the program temporarily.
But it coincides exactly with when Lucille Bluford was pressing for this, rather than
have her admitted to the University of Missouri, we'll close down the program for a while when
the graduate program in journalism at Lincoln is created, then we open the University of Missouri back up.
These were ways to avoid bringing African American students to the University of Missouri.
[Audience Member] I'm a little unclear on why they finally relented.
Was it because they were getting more and more lawsuits and applicants?
They just threw up their hands?
What made them finally let those last guys in?
[James Endersby] Oh, in 1950?
I think they saw the writing on the wall.
It was just too expensive.
And that was the strategy of Sidney Redmond and the others was Gus Regel wanted to enter
a graduate program in Economics.
So you had to create a graduate program in economics.
The other two wanted to get into engineering in Rolla.
So you were going to have to create a graduate program in engineering at Lincoln University.
So that was Charles Houston's strategy all along is make them pay.
And the University of Missouri and the state, as well as the other states across the country,
would realize segregation is just too expensive.
It does not justify this expense.
It costs too much to provide equal facilities for black and white.
At the end of the day, they're going to say, it's easier and cost effective just to integrate.
And that was Charles Houston's strategy all along, and it proved correct in the long run.
[Audience Member] Hi.
We enjoyed your presentation.
The U.S. Supreme Court then accepts this case on a writ of certiorari, which means it's
optional.
It's their choice.
Do you have any thoughts as to why they accepted this case at this time instead of an anti-trust
case or some other case?
[James Endersby] I think it's clear from the case that a lot of the reaction of the Supreme
Court justices is that the time that Charles Evan Hughes was Chief Justice was really a
time of transition, and the Supreme Court thought, this is a time for change.
This was the time to apply the 14th amendment, and I think that's why they had taken on the
case.
This gets all involved in political history at the time.
There were the four horse men, who were opposed to FDR and the New Deal and all of that.
Two of them had left.
McReynolds and Butler were the two that had remained, so the Court is transitioning into
something which was more like FDR's vision of the future, and I think Charles Evan Hughes
and the others were seeing that this is the time for something to go on.
Now, at the time, the NAACP did not see this.
This is why Walter White and Roy Wilkins opposed this.
And it's primarily because of the naming of Hugo Black who, again, if you recall your
history, had an association with the KKK in Alabama or at least allegedly was supported
by the KKK.
So they thought that Black was going to be the leader of the revolt defending segregation.
Black actually became one of the most liberal justices in terms of Civil Rights and civil liberties.
They read it wrong.
But I think Hughes and the rest of the court knew what they were doing from the time they
accepted the case.
[Audience Member] I just wanted to say thanks for practical break down of a situation that I didn't realize how vague my understanding of it was until it's historically laid out.
Second of all, just a timely tribute to another famous Missourian who was a graduate of the
Poro School of cosmetology, the late Chuck Berry.
[Laughter]
[Audience Member] Hi, Dr. Endersby.
So has the university ever tried to, like, make their image look better and, like, write
their wrong and look into his disappearance?
Or were they just always dismissive of it, from my understanding?
[James Endersby] Maybe I'll come back to his disappearance.
The university has tried to make amends, and in fact, Gaines was given a degree after the fact.
Probably there's no way he's alive, because he would be over 100 now, but his family came
and accepted an honorary degree on his behalf and he was admitted to the Bar by the Missouri
Bar Association.
So if he were alive today, he could practice law within the state of Missouri.
There has been some attempt to sort of justify the wrongs of the past through the universities' actions.
To my knowledge, the university never really made an effort to what happened to Lloyd Gaines.
I'm surprised nobody has asked what happened to him yet.
I'll leave it there unless somebody else wants to ask.
[Audience Member] What happened to him?
[Laughter] [James Endersby] That is an excellent question.
What happened to Lloyd Gaines?
It is one of those great historical mysteries.
And I think secretly, Bill and I, when we wrote this book, hope that somebody knows
and somebody is going to tell.
The most likely scenario and the one we discuss in the book is the one I think there's the
strongest support for.
Most people, when they hear that Lloyd Gaines disappeared, they assume that there was some
sort of foul play and that he was probably murdered.
There's never been any evidence of a crime.
That doesn't mean it didn't happen, but there's no evidence of a crime.
What the NAACP believed after the case, after he disappeared, they believe that Lloyd Gaines
accepted a large amount of money to leave.
And in fact, there is some circumstantial evidence that Lloyd Gaines may have gone to
Mexico City.
Lorenzo Greene, who is a historian at Lincoln University, a very reliable guy, and there's
variations in this account, but basically, Lorenzo Greene claimed that he had some evidence
that Gaines was, in fact, in Mexico City.
And in fact, that was sort of the belief, if I've got something similar, it was even
published in the black press.
This was in 1940 from The Chicago Defender.
There were rumors that Gaines was living in Mexico City, sort of living the good life.
But it was never actually confirmed, though a lot of people would say these kind of things,
you know, there was no strong confirmation of that.
So that's the most likely scenario of what happened to Lloyd Gaines.
[Audience Member] Do you think because he wasn't, like, in St. Louis or in Columbia
that maybe nobody really knew who he was, do you think?
[James Endersby] He was very well known at the time, not in this paper, but in some of
the other papers, his picture was in the black press a lot.
People recognized him.
When he we want to the University of Michigan there for a while, other people knew who he
was.
Heman Sweatt, who was the plaintiff in Sweatt v. Painter, which is one of the cases against
the University of Texas, he also went to the University of Michigan and they knew each other.
They lived around the corner from one another.
Sweatt did not like Lloyd Gaines, by the way.
He thought he was a real jerk.
[Audience Member] Do you think because he was very, do you think because he was very
well known, like if there was foul play, then that could have been a factor in his disappearance?
[James Endersby] It's certainly possible that because he was prominent that it was covered
up better.
But you know, these things come out.
I mean, a lot of these Civil Rights cases, as we're finding even within the last few
months, people just can't keep a secret.
And so ultimately, somebody is going to say, yeah, I was that or I knew something and there's
just simply been none of that evidence.
Now, the FBI, you know, the FBI released a lot of the cold cases involving the Civil
Rights cases.
There isn't a case about Lloyd Gaines.
There is no body.
There's no evidence.
There's no testimony that anything happened.
So the FBI never opened a case on what happened to Lloyd Gaines.
His family did not report him missing.
Gaines was the kind of guy, kind of the independent guy who was just disappear for long periods
of time and his family wouldn't know where he was.
There was a point, sort of in the middle of the case that his family was convinced that
he had been kidnapped, that Lloyd Gaines was kidnapped, but then he like said, no, no,
I'm right here.
I'm fine.
So the family did not report him missing.
[Keona Ervin] Well, that will do it for the evening.
We thank Dr. oh, one more?
[James Endersby] One more.
[Audience Member] Sorry.
Who did the NAACP theorized paid him off?
Did they name any particular groups or people?
[James Endersby] It's never written down that I could find.
There is one sort of oblique reference to it as a white newspaper publisher in Missouri
that paid him $10,000.
This would be in the late 1930s, 1939.
That's a lot of money in 1939.
There's one sort of vague reference to this.
But no.
[Keona Ervin] Okay.
All right.
Thank you, Dr. Endersby.
[James Endersby] Thank you, I appreciate it.
[Applause]
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