After spending his entire adult life in the service of others, former lawman and Louisiana Representative Terry Landry is retiring to focus on serving those closest to him – his family.

Terry Landry rose from humble, working-class beginnings to become a police officer – an unheard-of profession for a black man in the Deep South at a time when nefarious Jim Crow laws still blighted the nation. He rose through the ranks to hold offices of great prestige in local and state police forces and was then elected to the Louisiana state legislature. Now, as retirement beckons, he is turning his focus to spending more time with his family.

With an exemplary life spent in law enforcement and then devoted to performing his civic duty on the Louisiana political stage, whilst all the time shattering firmly entrenched racial glass-ceilings – the formidable, pioneering and profoundly inspirational Terry Landry has achieved a colossal amount in his professional career and also bequeathed a lasting legacy to future generations.

Now a still sprightly and dynamic seventy, he cuts an imposing figure with his gargantuan frame, exuding dignity, decency and gravitas, as befits one who has occupied the highest echelons of public office during his career, and, let it be said, done so for the right reasons.

With his sleek, shaven head, greying goatee beard and burnished copper complexion, and eyes aflame with integrity, compassion and the continued desire to make a tangible difference in the lives of others, especially those less fortunate, Landry is a community stalwart down to his fingertips. A man of immense probity and a tireless, sincere and dutiful public servant, he is without doubt a “rara avis” – and one whose impact and visibility first on Louisiana’s law and order, and then political landscapes in the last 30 years have been as vast as his towering physical stature.

Early Life and Family Roots

Born the eighth of nine children in New Iberia in 1951 at the midpoint of the 20th century – a febrile and, as he explains with subtle understatement, “a pretty unique time in American history”, when society was in a state of momentous racial flux and social upheaval, Terry Landry has by necessity always had to be a rebel with a pugnacious streak.

The lasting remnants of the pernicious, de-humanising Jim Crow-era laws were still painfully visible in Louisiana at that time, and it was by no means an easy place for a young African American man to be raised; black families routinely struggled with the arduous effects of segregation, overt discrimination and racial abuse, not to mention the concomitant burdens of poverty (if not penury) and intense, physically draining labour. However, as change came about peacefully (albeit slowly), so Landry began to bloom.
“My parents were blue-collar working people. My dad was self-educated. He had a third-grade education, but taught himself to read and write,” he recalls, evidently proud of the auto-didacticism in his family.

Landry’s upbringing and outlook were indubitably influenced by his Creole father’s positively Stakhanovite work ethic – one borne out of working every day at back-breaking, manual jobs, from harvesting sugarcane in the fields to laying pipes when city water first came to rural Louisiana. He then worked as a plant operator with Central Louisiana Electric and Water for more than 32 years.

Given Landry’s recalcitrant streak – one engendered by the tumultuous Civil Rights era and the fomentation of righteous social discontent beginning to sweep America at the time – he wasn’t a fan of school. “I didn’t have an interest in conforming to the rules,” he readily admits. Having understood the correlation between his own temperament and the wider context of societal change and racial unrest in the 1960s, he says: “There was a lot going on in America and it had just a total impact on me. I wanted to be part of the movement in some kind of way.”

But he was blessed with strict disciplinarian parents who stressed the importance of education, even though they themselves had had limited access to one, and who inculcated in him the belief that a solid educational foundation and an industrious work-ethic were the only truly helpful tools on the path out of poverty. “They instilled in us that you’re no better than anybody else, and you’re no worse than anyone else, but you have to work.” Such judicious and discerning wisdom would prove incredibly useful for the rest of his life.

When Landry was in his late teens, his oldest brother was tragically killed in a salt mine accident at Jefferson Island – something which understandably had instant and wide-ranging repercussions on his psyche. “It was really the first traumatic instance in our family,” Landry ruefully recalls with candour. “It almost destroyed us, because we were a pretty close-knit family. That kind of sent me into a spiral.” Landry in due course graduated from high school and, feeling a combination of grief over his brother’s death and confusion over where his life was heading, immediately enlisted in the US army.

Landry spent one year in Vietnam and was fundamentally and irrevocably changed by his tour of duty in the maelstrom of war. The experience would prove to be a revelatory one that gave him increased self-knowledge and invaluable intellectual lucidity. “I learned a lot about myself,” he says frankly. “I learned a lot about the democracy that we live in. I learned about people.”

His time serving in Vietnam also enabled him to harness and master fear. “I was afraid every day that I was there. I was afraid because it was just a culture shock for me. I had never been away from my family, and I had to grow up really quickly and I did, thank God.”

His Start in Public Service

After serving for three years in the army, with distinction, Landry realized “that wasn’t what I wanted to do”. He returned to Louisiana in 1973, aged 22, and joined the New Iberia Police Department, inflamed with a nascent conviction for public service, and thus embarked upon what would become a phenomenally successful career.

Trailblazer

Despite his innate humility and reticence to admit it, Landry was unquestionably a trailblazer. The profession he had altruistically chosen to enter was still imbued with the ante-diluvian racial attitudes of the time – think the overt, despicable racism of In The Heat of The Night. Whilst Landry may not have been Mister Tibbs, as a local African-American man, going into such an oppressive working culture must have taken immense courage, fortitude and resilience.

“I was the first person in my family to go to work for the police department because when I left home, the police department was more or less segregated,” he says. Shockingly, as egregiously archaic and morally bankrupt as this sounds to our modern ears, right up until the early 1970s, “black police officers could not arrest white individuals.” But by the time he returned home from Vietnam in 1973, his local department had been integrated. He had served his country overseas with distinction, and now was serving among the neighbours he’d known as a child and the community he had grown up in.

Both in his actions and in his manner, it is evident that Landry has long been motivated by an ardent desire not only “to protect and serve,” but to uplift and empower others, especially those disenfranchised and, through no fault of their own, those confined to the perilous margins of society by the vagaries of history and hue.

However, one day while he was on patrol, Landry was approached by a man from the Shell Oil company who was recruiting minorities. He admits, “I really didn’t want to do anything other than what I was doing, because I enjoyed being a police officer, but the money that they were making was so enormous.”

Therefore, incentivized by the increased fiscal remuneration, Landry accepted a position, first as a roustabout and then as an operator on a barge, and held that position for five years, making five times what he’d been earning as a police officer. But it was evident to him that something was missing, and Landry characterizes it as the call of “a servant’s heart.” Despite the initial lure of Mammon, he was aware that this wasn’t where he truly belonged. He craved a place where he could help others in a more personal and tangible capacity.

With an endearing frankness and disarming honesty, Landry admits, “I hated the police when I was coming up. I hated them because of the segregation and the Jim Crow laws.”

Interestingly, and wholly to his credit, as someone who has dedicated large swathes of his professional life to law enforcement, Landry long ago resolved any potential contradictions or tensions inherent in the notion of being both Black and Blue (African American and a police officer), especially given the police’s appalling history of racial violence perpetrated against black people, be it in Louisiana or nationwide. Such a resolution is surely a testament to both his strength of mind and the force of his character, as well as his determination to achieve the “greatest good” for the greatest number – be they from similar or even disparate racial or social backgrounds to his own.

Motivated by a palpable desire to “just make his community better”, Landry was also aware of wanting to be part of the burgeoning movement of change sweeping the country and wanted to be an active agent in that process, as opposed to a passive bystander.

“I wanted to be involved in that paradigm shift that I had seen throughout the country. We were going through a movement. We knew things were not right. We can’t expect somebody else to change it. We have to change it.”

Throughout his career, it is abundantly clear that Landry has always been a staunch believer in personal responsibility and an indefatigable advocate of “good, old-fashioned hard work” as the most efficacious path to betterment and self-advancement. Landry has, perhaps somewhat controversially, always been distinctly wary of welfare, preferring to help others get themselves out of poverty, without the need for state handouts that spawn a culture of dependency. This laudable ethos of self-reliance and working for one’s living came directly from his parents, who engendered in him the value of hard work and a reluctance to accept governmental assistance: “They instilled in us that you’re no better than anybody else but you’re no worse than anyone else, but you have to work. A day’s pay is equal to a day’s work. My family didn’t stand for you being a product of government assistance. You had to go and work and earn your living.”

By this point, Landry had married and had children, and his wife Sharon encouraged him to do what would bring joy and peace to him every day, even if it meant a drastic pay cut: “If you’re not happy, it reflects in everything that you do,” he says from a place of self-knowledge. “She understood that and said, ‘Whatever you do, we’re going to make it. We can make this work. And we did.”

A firm believer in the need to change institutions from the inside, as opposed to just critiquing or denigrating them for their failings from the outside, Landry’s philosophy of “change from within” has been a central tenet of his success throughout his career. He articulates it thus: “I learned that if you’re going to change something, you can’t change it by throwing rocks at it. You’ve got to get in the system.”

Thus in 1978, propelled by an honourable, ethical desire for public service, keen to affect change from within, and with the assistance of his loving, supportive spouse, Landry applied to and was accepted by the Louisiana State Police.

Heeding The Call

Acutely conscious of the fact that the Louisiana State Police had only hired their first African American in 1967 (and even that was allegedly under duress), Landry had to battle doubly hard against Jim Crow-era segregationist attitudes, as well as competing against people who all had college degrees, compared to his own high school diploma. As he readily admits, “I had to work hard to keep up with them to not be last, to not be a failure.” The challenge made Landry want to work even more assiduously to achieve his goals.
“All I wanted to be was a good police officer,” he says. “I wanted to make a difference for the people I came in contact with.” Aware of his limitations within the bigger scheme of the organisation, he concedes, “I knew I couldn’t change the world by myself, but I knew I could make a difference with the people I came in contact with.”

Landry went on to have a long and illustrious career with the Louisiana State Police, serving in a plethora of varied roles, including patrol trooper, detective sergeant, a member of the SWAT team, and the training academy in Baton Rouge. In addition, he was Commander of the Crime Laboratory, Investigative Support Section, Gaming Enforcement Division, and Protective Services. He was later promoted to Lieutenant Colonel, during which he also served as Chief of Staff, Deputy Superintendent of Support, and Deputy Superintendent of Patrol.

Yet, despite his continued promotions and having amassed a cornucopia of experience, Landry regrettably still met with obstacles. He admits that the segregation and racism endemic in certain demographics’ attitudes affected him:

“It had a profound effect on me because I knew there were many people in certain segments of this community who didn’t believe that I could arrest them.”

Often having been on the receiving end of verbal and physical resistance, sheer resilience and a heightened awareness of who had gone before him enabled him to keep going in the face of such unsavoury provocations. Landry acknowledges, “I knew that everything that I did was not only reflective on me and my family, but the whole community whose shoulders I was standing on, for those people that went before me.”

With a distinctly selfless outlook, Landry did not wish to ascend the greasy pole of promotion for promotion’s sake, but instead found far greater meaning in facilitating a path for those who would follow him. He admits, ”I had a desire not to climb the ladder in the State Police, but to be a representative of my community, so that the person coming behind me wouldn’t have the obstacles in their way that I had.”

With a combination of prescience, humility and sagacity, Landry readily concedes, “Not everyone gets a chance in life to make a difference. Very few of us get a real chance to make a difference in our communities and people’s lives, and I had that opportunity. And I realised that only I can squander it.”

Exceedingly cognisant of the sacrifices made by the older generation, Landry is profoundly grateful for the racial gains they made. As he explains, “The people that I tried to interact with most when I was coming up were older people, people my dad’s generation. I wanted to hear about their struggle. I wanted to hear about what they had to endure because I know I didn’t wake up and things were one way. Those people went through a lot.”

According to Landry, things which would seem incomprehensible to any sentient human being today were sadly commonplace back then, woven into the accepted fabric and mores of everyday life. “In the Jim Crow era, my dad tells about the time that you’re walking on the sidewalk and a white person’s coming, you got to get off the sidewalk. If a white woman is on the same side, you better not be on the same side with her. You better walk over.”

Landry is replete with palpable gratitude towards his elders, since their actions ensured that he (literally) did not have to cross over to the other side of the road. “Those people endured a lot and they made a lot of sacrifices. And it made me appreciate and know that things were laid out for me to be where I was. And I wasn’t going to disrespect their honour and squander this opportunity to really make a difference.”

His overwhelming desire was to be a decent police officer with a fully functioning moral compass, wholly dedicated to delivering equitable treatment to all. As he explains, “I just wanted to be a good police officer. I wanted to treat people fairly. I wanted people to know that I was going to be a person that’s approachable. I was going to a part of the community, not apart from the community.”

At all times, Landry made it his priority to stay resolutely rooted in the local community and made an effort not to only surround himself with friends who were police officers, but instead to keep people from all walks of life among his closest circle, and to thus cultivate a broader, more holistic view of the world. “So I stayed engaged in the community and if you stay engaged, you hear and you see a lot,” he says.

The Struggle of Rising Through the Ranks

Though he wore a badge and presented himself at all times with consummate professionalism, Landry still encountered resistance from some more backward quarters where racism still flourished. Yet ironically, resistance didn’t only come from bigots or people who had broken the law. He also received some surprising – albeit informative – reactions about his career choice from some of the people in his old neighbourhood.

“Once I was hired by the State Police, I used to visit my parents in the neighbourhood I grew up in, and I was just astonished,” he says. “The generation before me, they were amazed to see an African American man in uniform or in a car. They’d never had that interaction with someone that looks like them.”

Realising that he was a racial pioneer for young black people coming behind him, and that he could now use his position to be a positive role model for African Americans, Landry consciously set about trying to recruit them to the police force, and in so doing, attempted to improve the hitherto fractious and tarnished relationship which existed between the police and the black community. Landry tells it like it was: “They didn’t have a good relationship because of the abuse, the biases and the injustices that were imposed upon them.”

In 1997, after training stints at the LSU Police Executive Institute and FBI Academy, Landry was promoted to the rank of Lieutenant Colonel.

The Biggest Challenge

Landry admits that while there were certainly external struggles, he often sailed right over those. It was, however, his internal desire for, and relentless pursuit of excellence which was his real motivating force – and arguably his biggest challenge. “There wasn’t a promotion that I applied for that I didn’t get. There wasn’t an assignment that I was asked to take that I didn’t take.”

After his inexorable rise through the ranks, history was officially made in the summer of 2000 when Landry was appointed Superintendent of the State Police by Republican Governor Mike Foster, and thus became the first African American Superintendent in Louisiana’s history. As Landry proudly explains, “I didn’t apply for the job. He (the Governor) asked me. So, I knew that was the real test of how I was doing.”

With only his high school diploma and on-the-job experience, and with no tertiary education whatsoever, Landry was aware that many expected him to fail when he took command of a department of 3,600 people. “I was the first and I knew the eyes of the state were on me.”

Upon taking office, perhaps somewhat counter-intuitively, Landry actively chose not to play it safe, but decided to brazenly confront some of the big, thorny issues du jour and made some hard, controversial decisions. Among those was his push against inegalitarian policing methods. As Landry explains, “I made a video with my staff about discrimination and profiling. Every trooper in the state was required to watch the video and sign a statement that there would be zero tolerance for discrimination profiling and sexual harassment.”

Caught between the Manichaean poles of racist white troopers who despised him for his skin colour and black officers who felt that Landry, as a fellow African-American, could have been doing more for their interests, it was by all accounts a tough gig.
As a committed egalitarian, if anything, Landry even nobly tried to tip the scales of justice in favour of the historically disadvantaged and those who had been denied opportunities due to their race or gender. “I told it to the staff, when we’re recruiting young troopers, and everything’s even and she’s a female or he’s an African American, give them an opportunity. Touch the scale a little bit.”

The Next Level

During his tenure as superintendent, Landry had to testify before the state legislature about the budget, and through that experience, became more familiar with the political process. He also began to appear as an expert witness, thus further expanding his knowledge of the branches of government through the courts.

After a “wonderful career” spanning 27 years, Landry left the police force, whereupon he became director of Security for the New Orleans International Airport and then the Chief of Police for Southern University (as a favour for the Chancellor) and Baton Rouge Community College.

Following the devastation caused by Hurricane Katrina in August 2005, and the ensuing massive population shift, a legislative seat became available in 2012. “I decided that I was going to run for the seat, and I won,” Landry says, wholly devoid of hubris. And so, a political career was born.

He was initially eager to serve because he believed that, when policymakers don’t know how the process works, people get left out. “I had worked with the legislature on different policy issues, and now I’d get a chance to work with the legislative branch of our government. It is a unique situation to find yourself in, especially as an African American.” As Landry states matter of fact about his singularity, “I’m the only career law enforcement officer that has ever served in a legislature.”

House of Representatives

Landry was duly elected to the Louisiana House of Representatives in November 2011 and served District 96 with distinction, solicitousness and resolve until 2019.

A stanch and vocal advocate for public education, affordable healthcare and responsible gun control, as well as Medicare expansion and prison reform, Landry consistently aligned himself with the poor, the marginalised and disenfranchised communities and strove through his civic engagement, public office and personal philanthropy to help alleviate their plight and improve their lot.

For several years, Landry has sedulously campaigned for the abolition of the death penalty in Louisiana and in 2019 backed the proposal to eliminate it altogether. Believing the death penalty to disproportionately impact the African American community in Louisiana in particular, Landry asserts, “We have the highest incarceration rate. We have the highest exoneration of people on death row that has been exonerated, not because of a technicality, but because they were found innocent.” On this topic, Landry is passionate, eloquent and unequivocal: “I just believe that it’s not man’s calling to decide whether a man lives or dies.”

The Next Chapter

Landry finished his second term in January 2020, and then officially retired from public life to focus on the health of his wife of 44 years, Sharon, until she sadly passed late last year. “Now it’s time for me to turn my attention toward my family and grandchildren,” he says unrepentantly.

However, no one knows what the future may hold, and Landry says he hasn’t checked everything off his list just yet. “I don’t think anyone could ever say that they have achieved everything they wanted to,” he says, “But what I do know is, in many instances, in the positions that I served, I left it in better shape than I found it. And I left a path for a guy that looked like me to replace me.”

Inspiring the Future

Landry has indubitably set a powerful and prodigious example and has “opened the door” for others. Having successfully managed to bridge the gap between young African Americans and the policing career path, he has demonstrated that being a police officer is not tantamount to being a “sell out.” Landry ruminates, “Law enforcement is a noble profession if you’re doing it right – if you’re doing it to serve and not to be served.”

Landry is naturally keen to see more black police officers, since he feels that “one of the reasons that our community gets a raw deal with the police a lot of the time is the absence of the African American police officer”.

Advocating for increased intra-racial solidarity, Landry hopes that the African American community can now find empowerment amongst themselves. “We have to learn how to lift each other up better. We should see each other as our brothers and our sisters, not our enemies. Our diversity is our strength, not our problem.”

Given his status as a veritable trailblazer and pioneer in his respective fields, Landry’s legacy will ensure that those coming after him have an easier time. He has magnanimously shouldered the burden of being the first African American in many formerly all-white spaces, and has thus taken the brickbats, absorbed the racism, and yet still emerged victorious and unbowed – a luminous beacon and example to others of what is possible when talent, industry, and the desire to do good all coalesce.

Landry sums up his time on earth with the philosophical contentment of a man who has fulfilled his potential: “I’ve led a great life; I’ve had a real good career. I’m at peace.”

Landry perfectly embodies the zeal, over-arching selflessness, and noble altruism of the famous mantra: “Service is the rent we pay for living.” Make no mistake – after a life dedicated to Louisiana law enforcement and then political office in the hope of affecting positive change, Terry Landry has certainly paid more than his fair share of the rent.

With abundant humanity, genuine compassion for those less fortunate and unremitting focus, drive, and tenacity, he has made Louisiana an infinitely better place in which to live, especially for minorities. It is evident that Landry is not only an appropriate hero for the people of Louisiana but for all of America too.