Born in Hoke County, North Carolina, he became the first person in his family to go to college and worked for several years as a chemist at shipyards in Virginia before obtaining his Juris Doctor degree.

Running against the local district attorney and over the objections of the county sheriff, he was found murdered in his home several weeks before the primary election.

While his murder was officially determined to be the result of an interpersonal dispute, the circumstances of his death remain unclear, with his friends and family having advanced suspicions that he was assassinated for political reasons.

[6] In 1981, he served as counsel for residents suing the Lumberton City School Board, arguing that the system's annexations of mostly-white jurisdictions in the county in the 1960s violated the Voting Rights Act of 1965.

The petitioners then proposed a recognition bill for Congress to adopt, but it failed due to opposition from the Department of the Interior and from other recognized tribes.

[6] In 1987, the North Carolina General Assembly created nine new Superior Court judgeships, including one covering Robeson County with the goal of allowing minority candidates better odds of winning judicial office.

Joe Freeman Britt, the county's white district attorney, declared himself a candidate for the office in the 1988 Democratic primary.

[12] Pierce announced in January 1988 that he would run against Britt in the primary, making him the first person to ever challenge the district attorney in an electoral contest.

"[14] On the morning of March 26, 1988, just a few weeks before the election, Pierce's body was found in his home in Wakulla by his cousins with shotgun wounds to his head, chest, and stomach.

Chavis was arrested and charged with murder, while Goins was found dead from an apparently self-inflicted shotgun wound to the head in his father's house.

Investigators quickly declared Goins' death a suicide, and Stone said he had probably killed himself to avoid being arrested, re-iterating that Pierce's murder was due to a personal dispute and not political.

[4] Pierce's briefcase, which had reportedly contained documents corroborating corruption claims in county government, had gone missing, as had the sheriff's office dispatch tapes from the night of March 25/26.

[4] Circumstances surrounding the murder of Pierce remain contested, and members of his family and elected officials have in the years since his death questioned the investigation.

[16] In the aftermath of the murder, a local civil rights march in Lumberton scheduled for April 4 to commemorate the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. was reoriented around honoring Pierce.

[6] To bring more racial balance to the court system, the General Assembly created another judgeship in the county and the governor appointed Lumbee attorney Dexter Brooks, a friend of Pierce, to the post.

[20][21] Lumbee River Legal Services posthumously dedicated its law library room to Pierce and commissioned a portrait of him to be hung there.