Law School at U. of Missouri Seeks to Right Segregationist Wrong

The University of Missouri’s School of Law is trying to award an honorary degree to a black man whom it rejected in the days of legal segregation but whose victory in a U.S. Supreme Court case paved the way for Brown v. Board of Education. According to the Associated Press, Lloyd Gaines will receive an honorary degree, to right a 70-year-old injustice, if the university can find a way to bypass a rule forbidding the awarding of such degrees posthumously.

Mr. Gaines, who had graduated from Lincoln University, in Missouri, was rejected from the University of Missouri’s law school but told that the state would pay for his legal education if he went to some other state—the technique some segregated states used to ship their black citizens elsewhere if they sought a higher education. The Supreme Court ruled that Missouri had to either admit Mr. Gaines or open a separate-but-equal law school for black students (The Chronicle, May 14, 2004).