Charles Houston, NAACP Special Counsel, targeted law schools with anti-Jim Crow lawsuits because he was optimistic that, based on their own experience, white judges would reject unequal training for black attorneys. After winning the Murray v. Maryland case, concerning the desegregation of the University of Maryland Law School, Houston worked with Marshall and Sidney Redmond on Missouri ex rel. Gaines v. Canada. In 1935 the University of Missouri Law School denied entry to Lloyd Gaines, an honor graduate of Lincoln University in Missouri, offering to build a law school at Lincoln or pay Gaines’s tuition at an out-of-state school.  Houston and Redmond argued the case before the Supreme Court in 1938. The Court ruled Missouri must offer Gaines an equal facility within its borders or admit him to the University’s law school. In response, the State legislature tried to erect a makeshift law school, inciting Houston to renew litigation. Meanwhile, Gaines disappeared, abruptly ending the case. His fate remains a mystery.