Wilmington groundbreaker, educator and thespian Lela Thompson dies at age 87

Lela Thompson, who in 1967 was the first Black woman to graduate from the University of North Carolina Wilmington (then Wilmington College) and who helped start the first theater troupe in the Port City to regularly perform plays by Black authors and with predominantly Black casts, has died. She was 87.

Thompson passed away at home of natural causes on Dec. 30, said her oldest daughter, Beverly Thompson Moore of Wilmington.

"She was the greatest mother on Earth. She loved God, her husband and her family," Moore said. "She loved her community, and especially she loved children ... She just had the love of acting and of people."

After graduating from Wilmington College with a bachelor's degree in education, Thompson had a three-decade career in the New Hanover County Schools, teaching at Williston Junior High (now Williston Middle School) and Wrightsboro and Snipes elementary schools.

But Thompson was best known for her work with the Willis Richardson Players. The theater troupe was formed in Wilmington in 1974 by Peter Smith, Gloria Ramos, Jim Johnson and others, and is named for the Wilmington native who is the first Black playwright to have work produced on the Broadway stage. (A play titled “The Chip Woman's Fortune” in 1923).

Thompson acted in the Willis Richardson Players' inaugural 1974 production at the Community Arts Center on Second and Orange streets, and with her husband, Melvin Thompson, who died in 2015, she ran the troupe for well over 20 years, both directing and appearing in plays and musicals.

“Whatever they needed, I did,” Thompson told the StarNews in 2011, including serving as prop mistress and public relations person, in addition to other roles.

In 2012, Thompson was the first recipient of the Lela Thompson Enduring Contribution to Wilmington Theater award at the first StarNews Wilmington Theater Awards at Thalian Hall in 2012.

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"I consider Lela Thompson the original doyenne of the Black theater scene in Wilmington," said Rhonda Bellamy, director of the Arts Council of Wilmington and New Hanover County. "I was so in awe of the passion she had to keep the troupe alive."

Thompson's granddaughter, Angel Major, who started doing plays with the Willis Richardson Players as a child, said that "some people play sports. Her thing was to act ... It was something she loved. Even with a full-time job as a teacher, even with a family, she kept (the troupe) going."

Thompson was also active in St. Stephen A.M.E. Church, which she attended for decades.

The Players last performed in 2019, before the pandemic, which was a setback for the troupe. The collection of short plays that Thompson both directed and appeared marked her final stage appearance. Major said that she and others have plans to keep the Willis Richardson Players active into the future.

Eight other Wilmington thespians have received the Lela Thompson Award since 2012, including most recently Wilmington actor Maxwell Paige in 2020. Paige performed in and directed shows for the Willis Richardson Players in the 1980s and '90s, and led a production of "The Wiz" in which Thompson played the Wicked Witch of the West.

"For me as an actor, (the Willis Richardson Players) gave me a place to be in shows. Nobody said, 'We don't have any parts for Black actors,'" Paige said. "It was great for the formative years of my acting career, a nice, fuzzy warm place where I could do my thing."

Thompson, Paige said, "was a driving force for getting things taken care of" as well as "a very sweet, caring loving person."

"She was modest," Moore, her daughter, said, adding that most people don't know she was the first Black woman to graduate from UNCW, an accolade she rarely talked about and certainly didn't trumpet.

After graduating from the formerly all-Black Williston High School in the early 1950s, Moore said, Thompson went to work at a local laundromat. After a severe burn left her hospitalized, she decided not to return to work but to go to college, graduating more than a decade after finishing high school.

In 1974, a dormant interest in theater (she acted in high school plays) was reborn when she saw an audition notice in the Wilmington Journal for the newly formed Willis Richardson Players. In 2011, Thompson told the StarNews the troupe's mission was “to involve and educate the public, and explore the Black experience.”

The group didn't stick to one kind of fare, but, in addition to being the only local troupe to produce work by Wilmington's native son Richardson, bounced between serious dramas like Lorraine Hansberry's “A Raisin in the Sun” to frothy musicals and variety shows. They took a cue from Broadway in doing an all-black version of “Hello, Dolly!” and performed the Fats Waller revue “Ain't Misbehavin',” a show Moore said was Thompson's favorite, several times.

Though most shows featured predominantly Black casts, the Players also worked with white actors and directors over the years.

"It was open to everybody," Moore said.

Starting the late 1970s, the Players moved their productions to Thalian Hall with the encouragement of Tony Rivenbark, the hall's long-serving executive director, who died in 2022.

In 2011, Rivenbark told the StarNews that the late Kay Swink did some of the first integrated theater in Wilmington in the 1960s, but that the Willis Richardson Players, under Thompson's leadership, helped pave the way for greater diversity across the theater scene. In recent years, Kevin Green's Techmoja Dance & Theatre Co. has taken on the mantle of staging work by Black writers and giving opportunities to Black performers, but during the '70s, '80s and '90s and into the 2000s, the Players were essentially the only Black theatre troupe in town.

“For a lot of people, both African-Americans and others," Rivenbark said, Thompson did "material that might not have otherwise been done.”

Thompson's survivors include her children, Blanche Beverly T. Moore of Wilmington, James M. Thompson of Greensboro, Melvin Thompson III of Greensboro, Cynthia Wiggs of Wilmington and Brian E. Thompson of Wilmington; a brother, Robert Harrison Sr. of Leland; eight grandchildren; and nine great-grandchildren.

Thompson's family will receive visitors 5-7 p.m. Thursday, Jan. 5, at Davis Funeral Home, 901 S. Fifth Ave. in Wilmington.

A celebration of life will be held 1 p.m. Friday, Jan. 6, at St. Stephen A.M.E. Church, 501 Red Cross St. in Wilmington.

Interment will follow at Pine Forest Cemetery.

This article originally appeared on Wilmington StarNews: Lela Thompson of Wilmington's Willis Richardson Players dies at age 87