WILLIE LANIER LEGACY
“In 1968, Lanier became pro football’s first African American starting middle-linebacker.”
Born in the Halifax County town of Clover, Virginia. Willie Edward Lanier graduated in 1963 from Richmond's Maggie Walker High School as a star football player. He attended Morgan State University, in Baltimore, where he started as a walk-on, and became a two-time Small College All-American. In the 1967 draft, he was a second-round pick of the American Football League's Kansas City Chiefs. In 1968, Lanier became pro football’s first African American starting middle-linebacker, a position referred to as ‘the quarterback of the defense.’ In 1970 he helped spur the Chiefs to an upset win in Super Bowl IV.
Nicknamed "Contact" because of his aggressive tackling and “Honey Bear” because of his innovative ‘bear hug’ tackling style, Lanier was named to the league all-star teams each year between 1968 and 1975 and missed only one game during his last ten seasons. He received the NFL's Man of the Year Award in 1972 for his community volunteer work.
Lanier retired in 1977. One of football's greatest linebackers, he was elected to the National Football League Pro Football Hall of Fame in 1986 and named by the NFL in 1994 as one of the top seventy-five players ever to play the game. The Richmond Times-Dispatch Touchdown Club of Richmond's award for the best small-college football player in Virginia is named for him. He was recently named one of the 100 greatest NFL players of all time. Since retiring from the game and returning to Richmond, Lanier has become a successful business executive. Lanier is no stranger to reaching back. With more than five decades of charitable service, he lives in Midlothian and directs the Lanier Group LLC investment firm.
“Virginia Union University recently named its new Turf Football field “Willie Lanier Field at Hovey Stadium”. Lanier hopes building new fields at HBCUs will be his lasting legacy to the game of football and to America’s Black colleges.”