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Lanier has said a thousand times since that his brief encounter with the people of St. Lawrence was a life changing experience. Before that freezing February night in 1942, he had accepted racial discrimination as an inevitable fact of life. He certainly hadn't wanted it or liked it, but he had accepted it. Things had always been that way. How could they be different?
He wasn't the same man after St. Lawrence. He had seen life as it could be: life as it should be. He knew that he was worthy of fair treatment and respect. He knew that a society could exist in which the color of a person's skin was irrelevant. He had seen that society, walked its streets, and been invited into its homes.
When teams of Sailors came through St. Lawrence the next day to round up the survivors of the shipwreck, Lanier realized that he was going back to the same sort of treatment that he had left behind, in both the Navy and in his own country.
Two years after the sinking of the Truxton, he was transferred to Jacksonville, Florida. When his train arrived in Jacksonville, he searched the train station for a place where a black man could buy a meal. The usual 'Colored Only' signs seemed to be missing, so he asked a Military Policeman for directions. The MP didn't know, but he directed Lanier to a hall where German and Italian prisoners of war were eating lunch, and advised him to ask one of the guards.
As soon as Lanier stepped into the hall, he was seized by a Jacksonville Policeman, and shoved to the ground. The Policeman put a boot on Lanier's neck, and threatened to shoot him in the head for daring to set foot in a room where white men were eating. Lanier was in uniform at the time. While captured enemies were treated with dignity and respect, this American serviceman in the uniform of his country lay on the ground at gunpoint, enduring threats and racial insults. Lanier's only defense was to think back to St. Lawrence, and to remind himself that he deserved better.
He continued to do his job and to endure.
In the late nineteen-fifties, after 17 years of shining shoes and washing dishes, he had another life-altering realization. The status quo would never change unless somebody changed it. Lanier recognized that he needed to do his part to bring that transformation about. He wrote a letter to the first African American Congressman, as well as the Bureau of Naval Personnel, informing them that he was qualified to be more than a Mess Attendant. He requested a technical school: any technical school.
It was an extremely courageous thing to do. Back then, minorities didn't dare question Navy policy. They didn't petition senior Navy leadership for redress of wrongs, or even suggest that they should receive the same treatment or benefits as white Sailors. Lanier's letter to the Bureau of Naval Personnel could have brought him all manner of grief. Instead, a few months later, it brought him new orders. He was to report to Fleet Sonar School in Key West, Florida, for training as a Sonar Technician.
If Lanier thought his troubles were over, he was mistaken. When he arrived at Fleet Sonar School, he ran into another barrier. To qualify for Sonar training, he needed a Security Clearance. Before granting a clearance, government investigators were required to locate and examine records regarding an applicant's parents and grandparents, to verify a Sailor's citizenship and identity, and to cross-check for disqualifying criminal activity. For most students, the process was quick and routine. For an African American, it was a problem. Many counties and states didn't begin maintaining records for African Americans until well into the twentieth-century. There were few, if any, records for Lanier's family. Government investigators could not find the information they needed to certify Lanier's clearance.
And so he waited, for days, weeks, and then months, while the system tried to cope with a situation it had never been designed to handle. After all, who could have imagined that a black man would ever need a Security Clearance?
While Lanier waited for news of his clearance, the Sonar School Counselor tried chipping away at his willpower. "You're too old to learn something this technical," the man told him. "The rest of the students are young, and their minds are sharp. You won't be able to keep up. They're all better educated than you are." That much was certainly true. Many of the white students had college; Lanier was almost entirely self-educated.
When everything else failed to discourage Lanier, the Counselor resorted to bribery. He offered Lanier a promotion to Chief Steward's Mate. He even promised to backdate the promotion to the previous October, which would entitle Lanier to nearly a year's worth of back-pay at a Chief Petty Officer's salary. To a black man in the 1950's, it was a veritable fortune. The money and promotion were his for the taking. All he had to do was drop out of the Sonar program.
Lanier looked the Counselor in the eye and said, "Sir, if you want me out of Sonar School, you're going to have to throw me out. Because I am not leaving otherwise."
Against all odds, Lanier's clearance was finally approved. He was admitted into Sonar School.
Many of the Counselor's words proved to be true. The other students were younger and better educated. They also had the benefits of solidarity and camaraderie.
Lanier's companions were isolation and discrimination. But he had a secret weapon. "I studied harder than everyone else in that school," he told me. "Those other boys were there for themselves. If one of them flunked out, it was his problem and his alone. But I had the future of black Sailors to think about. If I didn't make it, the next black man would have it ten times as hard."
Another man in his situation might have become bitter and disillusioned. Lanier buckled down and worked harder, determined to prove that a black man could excel in a technical rating. His hard work paid off. In 1957, he became the first African American Sonar Technician in the United States Navy.
Following Sonar School, he reported to a destroyer, USS Bailey (DD-713). When he arrived on the quarterdeck, the Officer of the Deck tried to send him down to the Steward's berthing, with the rest of the black Sailors. Lanier shook his head, presented his written orders, and said proudly, "No Sir! I'm not a Steward's Mate. I'm your new Sonar Technician."
Lanier went on to tell me at length about some of the things he did afterward to demonstrate his technical abilities to a disbelieving Navy. I'd love to print them all here, but this column has already grown too long. Let me just say that the Navy did begin to change, and the Lanier Phillips was one of the catalysts. He didn't restrict his efforts to the Navy, either. In 1965, four years after his retirement from the Navy, he marched with Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. at Selma, Alabama. As a civilian technician, Lanier went on to work with EG&G and the ALVIN deep water submersible team, demonstrating time and again that an African American man can function at the absolute pinnacle of technical excellence.
Lanier is incredibly proud of today's Navy. He holds the Navy up as a model of what Equal Opportunity should look like. He's pleased to have had a hand in bringing it about. And, as he told me near the end of our interview, "That's not too bad for a guy who started out shining shoes."
