Photograph #2

Raleigh, NC -Ruth and Evelyn Pope, with their parents, Dr. Pope and Delia Pope, at the Pope House, c. 1913.

Courtesy of the Pope House Museum Foundation.
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Evelyn and Ruth Pope grew up in a brick house on Wilmington Street, in a wealthy Black family that posed a challenge to the racist social order of the early 1900s.

Their father, Dr. Manassa Pope, was the first Black man in North Carolina to receive a medical license. Dr. Pope had also served as a surgeon in the 1898 Spanish-American War.

Their mother, Delia, was born to formerly enslaved parents. Before her marriage to Manassa Pope, she worked as a schoolteacher. Later, she was a representative for a company owned by Madam C.J. Walker, a famous Black businesswoman who made beauty products for Black women.

Before his children were born, Dr. Pope had moved to Raleigh to open a medical practice. He built the house on Wilmington Street in 1901 with his first wife, Lydia, who died of tuberculosis a few years after.

When he married Delia in 1907, the house was a powerful symbol of his financial success. The couple had two children, Evelyn B. Pope, who was born in 1908, and Ruth P. Pope, who was born in 1910.

Evelyn and Ruth grew up in an elegantly decorated house with all the modern conveniences. At the time, most homes were made of wood, so it was a sign of wealth to have a home of brick.
The interior of the house had varnished wood trim, doors, and floors, an impressive staircase, and a stained glass window in the front hall.
There was also a kitchen with running water, a full bathroom, coal burning stoves, a telephone, and a call bell system for the servant the family hired.

The section of Wilmington Street where the Popes lived was home to many successful Black professionals. The street was on the border between an African American neighborhood called Fourth Ward, and a White neighborhood.

Though no written evidence survives, it seems that the Popes lived in the most elite place they were allowed as a Black family.

Manassa and Delia Pope were strict Baptists who placed a high value on education. They were also involved with politics and the struggle for Black civil rights.

In the early 1900s, North Carolina had racist laws that prevented most African American men from voting (women of all races were not allowed to vote).

Jim Crow laws segregated public facilities such as schools and busses. When Black soldiers returned from World War I in 1919, they were forced to return to the status of second-class citizens. White racists constantly threatened Black people with violence if they demanded more rights.

To protest these conditions, Dr. Pope ran for mayor of Raleigh in 1919 on an African American ticket. The Black candidates on this ticket knew that they would not win the election. Instead, they ran to make a public statement about the oppression that Black people faced in their city.

Ruth and Evelyn were still children, and the campaign put the whole family in danger. Yet it was an important form of non-violent protest that came decades before the modern Civil Rights Movement.

Unlike many parents at the time, the Popes believed that their daughters should pursue professional degrees.

Both Ruth and Evelyn received undergraduate degrees from Shaw University, a historically Black university. Both women then went on to earn master's degrees from Columbia University, a White institution.

Evelyn earned a degree in library science, and Ruth in home economics. Evelyn became a respected librarian at the North Carolina Central University Law School and Ruth became a home economics teacher in the Chapel Hill public schools. Neither of them ever married or had children.

Both women lived long lives; Evelyn died in 1995, and Ruth in 2000. Towards the end of their lives, Ruth and Evelyn decided to preserve their family home as a historic site.
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Narrative and photo source: Courtesy of the Pope House Museum Foundation.
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Document: Ruth’s Autobiography
This document was excerpted from a term paper, “My Autobiography,” that Ruth Pope wrote in 1939 for an education course. At the time, she was studying for her master’s degree at Columbia University, a majority white institution.

My father as a youngster grew up proud of himself and his beautiful clothing. In short he was the spoiled child…. His schooling continued,…he left home, went to Shaw to further his education…War came! Yes, and he volunteered and enjoyed having served his country…After the lapse of years he returned to Raleigh to practice and open a drug store. This new experience proved very profitable in business and matrimony. It was then he met my mother, whom in late years he delighted in teasing by saying, "she was one of the small town old maid schoolteachers whose chief business at the drug store was to catch a view of the new unattached doctor." His social life was broad, for diversion he spent much time in card playing, baseball, and horse racing. Religious, yes a Baptist Sunday school teacher and Deacon of church. He attributed his success, if any, to God's help. He died at the age of 76 years.

My mother, a very capable and attractive woman was one of ten children five of whom were reared by an Aunt and elder sister due to the death of their parents. Her early childhood was spent in a home of average means and she had been taught to work making every job count as an art. Her Home training and moral standards were all instilled…

A home for these two [Dr. Pope and Delia Pope] so different in background whom fate or fortune had joined was built with the conveniences of that age in a mixed neighborhood of foreigners, whites, and negroes. No two of these races mixed and thus harmony at all times existed between them…

We [Ruth and Evelyn] were taken to Sunday school and occasionally allowed to stay for church. Here we were taught not to look around and whisper but to sit attentively… my mother and father would tell me, "pretty is as pretty does," and insisted that we were both pretty only when we were good…Sometimes mother would be busy or she wanted to read or play the piano. On one specific occasion, and one I can't forget, as she played and I wanted her to go out and see a sand house I'd built she kept saying I'll be out but didn't move. My anxiety grew, I showed my temper by biting the paint along the edge of the keyboard…

On entering high school I was thrilled, because I was sure I knew it all. This school was new, Raleigh's first public High School for negroes. I determined to do my best in order that I'd have the honor of making the highest average and have the pleasure of being May Queen in the carnival. I did this and even more I played basketball and tennis and was an active person in all school activities.

From the Pope Family Papers, #5085, Southern Historical Collection, the Library of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.