Pope is the author of four short stories published in Waverly Magazine, and was one of the American authors included in W.E.B. DuBois’s Exhibit of American Negroes organized for the 1900 Paris World’s Fair. After one year teaching at the Tuskegee Institute, she worked for the remainder of her career as a teacher in the DC Public Schools, from 1874 through 1906.
Born free to formerly enslaved parents, Pope grew up in this charming house in Georgetown, one of nine children whose father was part of the largest slave escape in the nation. Although the escape on the Pearl in 1848 was unsuccessful, her father Alfred was freed in 1850 at the death of his slave master. He later became a member of the Board of Trustees of Colored Schools in Washington and Georgetown.
Pope became one of the first female members of the Niagara Movement, a precursor to the NAACP, when she joined in 1906. In August 1906, nearly 50 years before Rosa Parks’s historic bus ride, Pope challenged Virginia’s segregation laws on trains when she refused to give up her seat in a “white” car. Although her court case was won on appeal, her settlement was symbolic: she was awarded one penny.
The Homes
