Angus Thompson stepped out of Sandy Grove Baptist Church in Lumberton into the bright sun on a recent Sunday, rejuvenated by the service’s music and fellowship.
He glanced across Martin Luther King Jr. Drive at W.H. Knuckles Elementary School, where he and his daughter and many other family members attended. His ancestors played a key role in early iterations of the church and the school, and Thompson continues to honor their legacy.
“It’s always on my mind that those are sacred grounds for me,” said Thompson, 73.
Although Thompson comes from a long line of educators who pushed for equal access, he opted to become an attorney. As it turned out, those two worlds collided.
When Thompson was elected to the Robeson County school board in 1988, he got a glimpse into what he already knew growing up in public schools. Education was under-funded, and schools lacked adequate resources.
So Thompson was eager to get involved when Robeson joined four other low-wealth school districts–Cumberland, Halifax, Hoke and Vance–to sue the state, claiming it failed to provide students an adequate education. He and his daughter, who was an eighth-grader at the time, were among the original plaintiffs in the case.
Over the next three decades, Leandro v. North Carolina was at the center of debates about how to improve public education outcomes. Its huge influence ended–or at least hit a major roadblock–when the state Supreme Court voted 4-3 in early April to dismiss the case.
Thompson, who has continued to advocate for Leandro funding, said he was disappointed but not particularly surprised by the court’s majority opinion by four Republican justices. He said he read every word of the ruling.
The next day, Thompson shared his thoughts and expertise during a Zoom call with the Lumberton chapter of Every Child NC, a statewide nonprofit that advocates for students’ rights.
“I’m not undone,” he told the group. “This is what struggle is about–we just have to keep on pressing.”
Family Legacy
Robeson, home to about 120,000 people, is among the most diverse counties in the nation. About 41% of residents are Native American, mostly members of the Lumbee Tribe of North Carolina and the Tuscarora. Roughly 30% of residents are white, and 24% are Black.
The rural county is among the poorest in the state, with nearly one-fourth of people living in poverty.
The Thompsons have been instrumental in Robeson County history for generations.
Alexander Hill Thompson, who was born into slavery in the county in the 1820s, learned how to read and write and passed the knowledge to his wife and children, according to family history. After the Civil War, he co-founded the Lumber River Baptist Association and the Thompson Institute, a religious boarding school for Black students at the current site of Knuckles Elementary.
Angus Thompson said his grandfather served as chairman of a local school board and set up a chapter of the NAACP in Robeson County in the 1940s. His father took over following the older man’s death, and his mother was a teacher.
When Robeson County schools integrated in the late 1960s and early ’70s, he said, his mother struggled to find a job because she had complained that white teachers made more money.
Thompson graduated from Lumberton High School in 1970 and then earned a degree from Morehouse College in Atlanta. He went on to graduate from law school at N.C. Central University in 1977.
He returned home to Robeson, where he became the county’s first public defender. (He represented Daniel Green, who was convicted in the 1993 killing of James Jordan, the father of NBA superstar Michael Jordan, near Lumberton.)
Many of the social ills that plague the county today–crime, drugs, and racism–also existed when Thompson was first elected to the Public Schools of Robeson County Board of Education in the late 1980s.
Tensions in the county were particularly high when two Native American men, Eddie Hatcher and Timothy Jacobs, held 17 hostages at the local newspaper office in Lumberton for several hours in February 1988. Armed with shotguns, the pair demanded an investigation into the treatment of Native American and Black residents by the local sheriff, Hubert Stone.
Weeks later, Julian Pierce was shot and killed at his Robeson County home. Pierce, a Lumbee and civil rights leader, was running at the time to become North Carolina’s first Native American judge. Officials said Pierce was killed during a family dispute, but some people have questioned whether the sheriff was involved.
Around the same time, the five school districts in Robeson County merged into one. Before the merger, many people in the county had argued that predominantly white schools had more resources than those that enrolled more Black and Native American students.
But the unified system continued to face challenges, Thompson said. There weren’t enough resources for students with special needs and those identified as academically gifted. Many athletic facilities were in poor condition.
Thompson hoped the Leandro case would bring relief. He convinced his daughter, VJ, who attended Lumberton Junior High at the time, to become a plaintiff.
VJ Thompson had attended a Catholic school at the urging of her mother, who wanted to ensure she had access to a quality education. But the school closed when she was 9, and she enrolled at Knuckles Elementary.
She earned near-perfect grades at Lumberton High School, where she graduated in 2000. But when she enrolled at N.C. State University, she felt a step behind other students who might have had access to better technology and more advanced classes in high school.
VJ Thompson, now 44, lives in Baltimore and works in human resources at the University of Maryland. She said she didn’t want her two sons to go to school in Lumberton, where she fears the educational shortcomings are more pronounced than when she was a kid.
Robeson County schools continue to lag academically, although they have made gains in recent years. In the 2024-25 school year, 37.5% of students in the district were proficient on statewide tests, compared to 55% statewide.
Leandro Rollercoaster
North Carolina largely funds public schools on a per-student basis. As the birth rate declines and more families opt for private, charter or home schools, many districts are dealing with a drop in enrollment.
Counties also spend money on education, including for school construction and salary supplements for teachers. While urban counties have larger tax bases to support schools, poor and rural counties struggle. Robeson ranked last in the state in per-student spending during the 2023-24 school year, according to a report from the Public School Forum of North Carolina.
The state allocates additional money to low-wealth school districts, but Thompson said it’s not enough to ensure that every student across the state has access to an equal education.
For Thompson and countless others, Leandro has been a rollercoaster ride.
The N.C. Supreme Court ruled in 2004 that the state violated its constitutional duty to provide a “sound basic education.” Nearly two decades later, state lawmakers intervened when a remediation plan called for $5.6 billion in additional education spending. They contended the judiciary was overstepping its authority in dictating spending.
But the court ruled in 2022, under a Democratic majority, that the legislature must comply.
Republicans secured a majority on the state Supreme Court in the 2022 elections, and after the new justices were seated, the court quickly took the unusual step to rehear the case. Four of the court’s five Republican justices supported the latest majority ruling, which dismissed the case on procedural grounds.
The five districts that originally sued the state filed a motion on April 22 requesting a temporary suspension of the ruling. They said they want to ask for another rehearing in the case.
Thompson says he is hopeful, like he has been all along, that schools will get the help they need.
“When I was in law school, I was taught that if there’s an injury, there’s a remedy,” Thompson said during a rally in Raleigh in 2022. “That’s what courts are for. If there’s an injury, then there’s a remedy. If there’s harm, then there’s a remedy.”
‘We’ll Move Forward’
Thompson was diagnosed with prostate cancer in 2023 and received radiation treatment for 28 days. But cancer didn’t stop him from advocating for schools. In early 2024, he attended a rally and prayer vigil in Raleigh in support of Leandro funding hosted by Every Child NC and Seeds of Hope CDC, a Lumberton nonprofit.
Thompson’s wife, Jacqueline Vandaliah Smith Thompson, died in November. He keeps busy these days at church, where he sings in the choir and attends services every Sunday. He continues to work as a criminal and civil rights lawyer in private practice.
Thompson now has his eye on the November election. He says it is more important than ever to vote for candidates who support public education.
“Quite frankly, I’m just really encouraged by what I’ve seen happening on the political scene coming up,” he told the local chapter of Every Child NC. “We’ve got to vote. Pray for divine intervention, protest and be heard, and vote and change.”
He said he’s not giving up.
“You can’t be a pessimist and do this kind of stuff,” Thompson said. “That’s what hope is about, that’s what my faith is about. Hope, it’s not just coming out of the storm. It’s being able to sustain during the storm. That’s important, so we’ll move forward.”