She graduated from the University of North Dakota (UND), pursued a career as an author, and was a long-time editor and journalist for Ebony magazine in Chicago.

Thompson was a recipient of the governor of North Dakota's Roughrider Award, and a multicultural center at UND is named for her.

[3] Thompson graduated from Bismarck High, where she had excelled in sports and pursued journalism, often to cope with the isolation she often felt.

[4] However, during her second year of college, an extended bout with pleurisy left her too debilitated to run track and forced her to leave school.

For three months and for a pay of ten dollars a week, she "learned how to run a magazine on hope, patience, and a very worn shoe string; to proofread and write advertising copy—and keep warm by burning magazines in an old fireplace," Thompson writes in her autobiography.

She was instrumental in shaping Ebony magazine's vision and guiding its coverage for approximately forty years while serving in a variety of editorial capacities.