The fifth Black graduate of Bowdoin, David Alphonso Lane Jr. (1895-1985), was am accomplished student, military expert, and educator. Lane was born on October 18, 1895, in Washington, DC. He attended M Street High School, which also had Samuel Dreer as a pupil. Dreer was the second Black graduate of Bowdoin (1910).
Lane graduated magna cum laude from Bowdoin, one of the top ten scholars of his class of seventy-seven men and the only African American enrolled at the school at the time. A member of the academic society Phi Beta Kappa, he was also the first African American student to join the Bowdoin debate team, and he garnered several awards for public speaking and debate. He was a Commencement speaker for his class.
At twenty-two years old, Lane was commissioned as second lieutenant under the Reserve Officers Training Corps program. Almost two years later, he was promoted to first lieutenant. After leaving the army, Lane earned a master of arts degree in English from Harvard University in 1920. This launched him into a twenty-two-year career as a college professor and administrator. He also served as editor of the Journal of Negro Education. At the outbreak of WWII, Lane reentered the army as an information-education specialist in 1942. During the next twelve years he served in a variety of roles, including three years in the Pacific, three years at the Pentagon, and two years in Germany as a US Army historian.
In 1955, Lane transferred to the Retired Reserve, but continued to work in Heidelberg, Germany, as a civilian historian for the US Army for another ten years. Lane died on August 20, 1985, in the town of Ossining, New York, at the age of eighty-nine.
