Julian Pierce

Julian Thomas Pierce (January 2, 1946 – March 25/26, 1988) was an American lawyer and Lumbee activist. Born in Hoke County, North Carolina, he became the first person in his family to go to college and worked for several years as a chemist at shipyards in Virginia before obtaining his Juris Doctor degree. Following two years of work for the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, he moved to Robeson County, North Carolina to direct a legal aid organization and in that capacity co-authored a petition to the federal government asking for the extension of federal recognition to the Lumbee tribe. In 1988 he resigned from his job to pursue a candidacy for a new Superior Court judgeship. Running against the local district attorney and over the objections of the county sheriff, he was found murdered in his home several weeks before the primary election. While his murder was officially determined to be the result of an interpersonal dispute, the circumstances of his death remain unclear, with his friends and family having advanced suspicions that he was assassinated for political reasons.

Early life

Julian Pierce was born in Hoke County, North Carolina, on January 2, 1946, to John S. Pierce and Mary J. Pierce. The Pierces were Lumbee Indian tenant farmers who had moved to the Hoke Indian community of Hawkeye from Chesterfield County, South Carolina. Julian was one of 13 children. He attended Antioch Elementary School and then Hawkeye Elementary and High School, from which he graduated in 1962 at the age of 16. He then attended Pembroke State College in Pembroke, North Carolina, graduating with a Bachelor of Science degree in Chemistry in 1966. He married and had three children, He worked in that capacity for ten years.

Pierce also heavily studied laws concerning federal recognition of Native American tribes. The Lumbee were the largest group of resident Native Americans in the United States east of the Mississippi River. While they had been recognized by North Carolina's state government as tribal community since the 1880s, they never achieved complete federal recognition. In 1987 Pierce and three others co-authored a petition on behalf of Lumbee River Legal Services and the Lumbee Regional Development Association to request that the United States Department of the Interior grant federal recognition of the Lumbee people as a tribe. Pierce announced in January 1988 that he would run against Britt in the primary, making him the first person to ever challenge the district attorney in an electoral contest. He resigned from his position at Lumber River Legal Services and organized a campaign, pledging to be a "hard but fair judge". He also indicated that he would investigate allegations that Sheriff Hubert Stone was engaged in a protection racket with drug dealers and that Britt had engaged in prosecutorial abuses. Stone tried to convince Pierce to drop out of the contest. He said in a 1989 interview, "I approached him and asked him not to run for Superior Court Judge, and asked him to run for [a lesser office]. I said, 'Joe Freeman Britt is going to run, and I'd rather not have a fight in an election over it.'" Pierce was reportedly angered by the encounter and stated that from then on he would focus on mobilizing black and Indian voters. The following day, a campaign worker told him that sheriff's deputies were spying on him and his campaign manager urged him to retain a bodyguard. Pierce declined to do so, explaining, "If it happens then it happens—they can kill me but they can't eat me."

Murder On the morning of March 26, 1988, just a few weeks before the election, Pierce's body was found in his home in Wakulla by his cousins with shotgun wounds to his head, chest, and stomach. Police, including state investigators and Stone, came to Pierce's home to investigate the murder. Speakers at the event encouraged attendees to vote for Pierce in the judgeship election despite his death. Britt was automatically declared the winner of the primary election. However, some reporters and campaign workers counted the votes and determined that Pierce actually won the vote posthumously, 10,787 to 8,231. To bring more racial balance to the court system, the General Assembly created another judgeship in the county and the governor appointed Lumbee attorney Dexter Brooks, a friend of Pierce, to the post.

Lumbee River Legal Services posthumously dedicated its law library room to Pierce and commissioned a portrait of him to be hung there. A scholarship for law students at North Carolina Central University was established in Pierce's honor in 2003. In June 2015, the North Carolina House of Representatives passed a unanimous resolution in commemoration of Pierce.