William J. Thompkins was a physician and health administrator in Kansas City, Missouri and served as Recorder of Deeds for the District of Columbia from 1934 to his death. He first received national notice when he challenged Jim Crow Laws in Oklahoma in Federal Courts in the early 1910s. He was a successful physician and was appointed superintendent of the Old General Hospital in Kansas City, Missouri and the Assistant Commissioner of Health in that City. He wrote an influential study of the relationship between housing conditions and tuberculosis in blacks and was active in Democratic politics which garnered him attention at the highest levels of the party. He became president of the National Negro Democratic Association and was a major campaigner for the Democratic Presidential Candidates in campaigns from 1928 until 1940, gaining national level party appointments in 1932, 1936, and 1940. In 1934 he was appointed Recorder of Deeds for Washington, DC. This position was the highest federal appointment given to an African American, a tradition which was started with Frederick Douglass' appointment to the position in 1881.

Recorder of deeds or deeds registry is a government office tasked with maintaining public records and documents, especially records relating to real estate ownership that provide persons other than the owner of a property with real rights over that property.