2021 Legal Legends of Color: Julian Pierce
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The Minorities in the Profession Committee of the North Carolina Bar Association honored Julian Pierce as a Legal Legend of Color at the 2021 NCBA Annual Meeting. The award was presented posthumously to Pierce, who was murdered in 1988 while seeking election to the Superior Court bench in Robeson County.
A graduate of the University of North Carolina at Pembroke, which at the time was known as Pembroke State University, Pierce received his law degree from North Carolina Central University School of Law and also held an LL.M. from Georgetown University.
Harvey Godwin Jr., chairman of the Lumbee Tribe of North Carolina, knew Julian Pierce for a total of four years. That sounds like and is a relatively short period of time, but for Godwin and so many citizens of Robeson County, any time spent in the shadow of Julian Pierce was extremely influential and inspirational.
He was a giant.
“My first knowledge of him was in 1985,” begins Godwin. “I was on the board of the Robeson Historical Drama Association, which produces the outdoor drama ‘Strike at the Wind!’, and Julian was on that board. We did an art dinner to raise money for the show which was very successful, and he came up to me that night and introduced himself.
“We just hit it off, and worked on ‘Strike at the Wind!’ together for the next couple of years. Then he decided to run for Superior Court judge in Robeson County for a newly created judgeship. It was one of nine judgeships created across North Carolina hoping they could get more minorities on the bench, and he decided to run for that. He asked me to be his campaign manager, which I thought was insane. I was only 30 years old – I didn’t know anything about running a campaign, local or otherwise. But that is how I met him, and we worked together up until his death.
“Even before he decided to run, and the political aspect started taking fruition, we saw each other and talked to each other every single day when he was the executive director of Lumbee River Legal Services. It was a very close relationship. My wife and I were raising two young sons at the time and Julian showed a lot of attention to both of them. He was just that kind of person, and had that kind of personality. He was a great listener, and whatever you were talking about, he would take interest in it. He was like that with everybody, not just me and my family.”
When asked to comment on Pierce’s legacy, Godwin doesn’t have to look very far.
“First of all, in my life, meeting him and listening to him and what he believed in, as far his approach and view of humanity, changed my whole life,” Godwin said. “Not immediately. It was one of those things like when you see a good concert or a good movie, and it doesn’t hit you until a couple of days later. It hit me later on, and encouraged me to go back to school and graduate from Pembroke State University in 1990 – two years after his death.
“He inspired me to do those things, and I never would have been tribal chairman if it hadn’t been for my relationship with him and the things we were doing in the ’80s.”
The legacy of Julian Pierce lives on in Robeson County.
“As far as the county,” Godwin continues, “this man decided not only to run for the judgeship, but he would have been the first American Indian judge in North Carolina, and he chose to take on the deadliest DA in the nation in Joe Freeman Britt. It took a lot of guts and backbone to do that. A lot of people shied away from him because they were they were fearful of the political regime that was in Robeson County at that time. But he believed he could make a difference on the bench. We didn’t have the terms then, but when you’re talking about social awakening, social justice, criminal justice, attacking systemic racism in the lower area, he was in the forefront, at the spearpoint, of these things.
“Things were happening that he wanted to change, and bringing people together to make that change, he was doing that. He was doing that before his campaign, but his campaign put the spotlight on his platform, and that was his platform. And now we have Lumbee judges, we have an abundance of Lumbee attorneys, which is a good thing in my opinion. Our DA is now Lumbee, our county manager is Lumbee, and our sheriff was Lumbee. And he was the catalyst for all of this. Thirty years later, he was the catalyst!”
Pierce, Godwin explains, had a gift.
“I think it is like an artist,” Godwin said. “God gives people certain gifts, and he doesn’t give them to everyone. Musicians, singers, dramatic arts – anything that is a talent of any kind – God gives those talents to people to share it with the rest of the world. I think that is what God did with Julian – he gave him this talent to share with the rest of the community that he loved so much.
“He could have settled anywhere. He could have stayed in New York or Washington and made a lot of money. He could have been on the Stock Exchange because he was very astute in that kind of thought process. Instead he decided to come back and serve his people, and that is something that God gives you in your heart to do.”
Pierce, Godwin adds, was also a great lawyer.
“When I knew him, he was already director of Lumbee River Legal Services,” Godwin said in reference to what is now the Pembroke office of Legal Aid of North Carolina. “He was very astute, very intelligent. This man grew up as a child dirt poor in Hoke County, He graduated high school almost two years early, went to college at Pembroke State University and from there to Central Law School (North Carolina Central University School of Law). He was intelligent in the law, just in the approach he took doing his business.
“He was a unique person who had a way of taking legal matters – complicated legal matters – and breaking them down to a person who had maybe a fourth-grade education to explain exactly what was happening to them in their case. If you are poor and don’t have representation, he is the person who would step up and give you legal representation and explain it to you in a way where you could understand every step of the process. And he had a way of making it personal where he could get down to that person’s spirit and talk to them at that level. That is why he won the election by almost 3,000 votes after his death.”
Pierce served on the board of the Robeson Healthcare Corporation, where he advocated for health services for Lumbee citizens. The Julian T. Pierce Medical Clinic in Pembroke bears his name. And he was also at the forefront of the effort, which continues to this day, to gain federal recognition of the Lumbee Tribe of North Carolina.
“He teamed up with several other Lumbee lawyers, and he did the research and organized the research for the first petition for full federal recognition in the 1980s, which was presented to the federal government after his death,” Godwin said. “That was work he had done.
“I remember one night after a performance of ‘Strike at the Wind!’, we sat at his house with some other cast members and friends, and for two hours no one said a word while he sat in his kitchen and explained what full federal recognition was and what it would mean to our people. I never realized at the time that 33 years later I would be telling this same story to senators and congressmen and congresswomen trying to achieve full federal recognition.”
In addition to the clinic, the name of Julian Pierce lives on in scholarship funds at his alma maters and the local community college.
“When he was murdered, and it was less than 30 days before the election,” Godwin said. “We had about $28,000 in our campaign funds. The committee decided to take that money and put it at Pembroke State University (now UNC-Pembroke) and at the North Carolina Central law school in an endowed scholarship in Julian’s name.
“So in the last eight to nine years, a committee was created that I am a part of, and it has representatives from UNCP and North Carolina Central and Robeson Community College. We have an art dinner in Julian’s memory, and this will be our eighth art dinner on August 7. So far we have put out $220,000 in scholarships to those three institutions in his name.
“People respect the legacy and acknowledge the legacy to contribute dollars to help other Julians, male and female, rise up for future generations.”
Russell Rawlings is director of external affairs and communications for the North Carolina Bar Association.