FBI to consider reopening Gaines case
Published March 6, 2007
An attorney representing the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People announced Friday that the organization has requested the FBI to reopen investigations into the disappearance of Lloyd Gaines.
Gaines was denied admission to the MU School of Law in 1936 because he was black. He later sued, which lead to a landmark U.S. Supreme Court ruling requiring the university to admit Gaines or establish a separate law school for him. Gaines never attended MU, and while attending school in Chicago, he disappeared in 1939.
In 2000, the Gaines/Oldham Black Culture Center was named after him and former curator Marion Oldham. Gaines received a posthumous honorary degree from the law school last spring.
NAACP Deputy General Counsel Angela Ciccolo made the announcement Friday during a guest lecture at the MU School of Law.
George Gaines, Lloyd Gaines' nephew, Chancellor Brady Deaton and Deputy Chancellor Michael Middleton attended the announcement.
"Lloyd Gaines is more than just a figure in your constitutional law textbooks," Ciccolo said in her address. "If he were here today, I would thank him for what he did for me."
The FBI announced Tuesday it would examine approximately 100 cold death and disappearance cases that occurred before 1969. About a dozen top civil rights cases were given special priority.
Ciccolo said she asked that the Gaines case be added to the list because she did not believe he was originally on it.
Kansas City FBI Field Office spokesman Jeff Lanza said he could not say at this point whether the case would be reopened.
"It's safe to say at this point that we will look at the facts and circumstances of the case and determine whether it will be reopened," he said.
He said each case would be evaluated on its own specific circumstances to determine if there is a need for further investigation.
In a release on the FBI Web site, Director Robert Mueller said suspects in several 1960s civil rights cases had been successfully prosecuted, including a 2001 conviction in a 1963 church bombing case, a 2003 conviction in a 1966 murder case and a 2003 conviction in a 1964 triple homicide case.
Black Culture Center Director Nathan Stephens said reopening the investigation would be a step in the right direction.
"I think it would provide a sense of justice for the family and the civil rights movement as a whole," Stephens said.
Stephens said he does not believe reopening the cases makes up for the FBI's negligence in the original investigation.
In September 2006, The Associated Press reported that the FBI had never conducted an investigation into Gaines' disappearance.
Ciccolo said after Gaines disappeared, people speculated he had fled to Mexico, gone to teach in New York or been killed.
George Gaines said he that didn't think Lloyd Gaines would have fled at the time of his disappearance, and that the case would be very difficult to solve.
"The only thing I think it will do is it will add new information," George Gaines said.
But Ciccolo said even though the case is among the oldest on the list of investigations being examined, it is still important that it be investigated with the others.
"It's important to send the message that violence and intimidation are unacceptable methods of trying to silence a voice like Lloyd Gaines," Ciccolo said. "We need to know what happened to him."