The Pope House Museum Foundation

The Dr. M.T. Pope House, maintained by the nonprofit Pope House Museum Foundation, is a highly significant African American historic resource that faces an uncertain future and is in need of community support. Listed in the National Register of Historic Places and designated a Raleigh Historic Landmark, the property is recognized both locally and nationally as a historically significant property.

Slavery and Civil Rights are major periods of African American history, but there is so much more that is often overlooked. For example, a small but significant number of blacks were free in the ante-bellum South, and their stories were and are rarely told. Even more important is the century between the Civil War and the Civil Rights Movement - one hundred critical years largely ignored in both history books and museums.

Mannasa Thomas Pope was born free - as were his parents and grandfather. The Popes were prosperous, literate landowners in Northampton County, North Carolina. After receiving a B.A. and an M.D. from Shaw University, Dr. Pope went on to a full life as a physician, business man, family man, second lieutenant in the Third Regiment of North Carolina assigned to the Spanish-American War, free mason, Sunday school teacher, and politician.

Dr. Pope's career as a physician included his participation in founding the Old North State Medical Society, an important statewide African American organization.
Dr. Pope became an active Republican (the party of Abraham Lincoln) in the 1880s. In 1902, he registered to vote - one of only seven men of color in Raleigh to do so - thus successfully challenging a new state voting law. In 1919, Dr. Pope mounted an even more serious challenge to African American disfranchisement - he ran for mayor of Raleigh. Though he lost the election, Dr. Pope has the distinction of being the only known African American to run for mayor of the capital city of a Southern state during Jim Crow segregation.

The highly esteemed Dr. John Hope Franklin, former James B. Duke Professor of History Emeritus at Duke University, stated that "The Pope House is a national treasure and should be appreciated as such." The Pope House Foundation is being supported in its preservation efforts by community leaders, including the Raleigh Historic Districts Commission (RHDC), which is in the process of drafting an application for statewide significance. This designation would protect the house from demolition. However, the most critical need is acquisition of the property by a stable owner. A Community Challenge "This Place Matters!" grant would make a difference to the City of Raleigh, the African American community, the State of North Carolina, and indeed the nation.

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