Cyrus Thompson: Doctor, Populist, and Voice of the Farmer

Cyrus Thompson was born in Onslow County in eighteen fifty-five and trained as a physician at Tulane, earning his degree in eighteen seventy-eight. But it was the plight of struggling North Carolina farmers that defined his public life. When the Farmers' Alliance swept through the state in the late eighteen eighties, Thompson became one of its most energetic speakers, traveling widely to advocate for the rural poor.

He rose to a leading role in the state organization, serving as its state lecturer, and became a pillar of the Populist Party, winning election as North Carolina's Secretary of State in eighteen ninety-six, a post he held through nineteen oh one. He remained a committed advocate for ordinary working people until his death in nineteen thirty.