African-American serviceman Lanier Phillips was just eighteen years old when he was rescued from a sinking warship off the coast of Newfoundland in 1942 - a turn of events that transformed his life and ignited a lasting passion for civil rights. The son of sharecroppers from the Deep South, and the great-grandson of slaves, Lanier knew only hatred for white people. As a child he was told never to look a white man in the face, for fear of a lynching. His experience with the villagers of St. Lawrence, Newfoundland, taught him that racism can be overcome and that the first change must come from...