By Ms Jheri Worldwide
Staff Writer
When time permits, do yourself a favor and visit the home of Dr. Manassa Thomas Pope, North Carolina’s first licensed Black physician and the only Black man to run for mayor of Raleigh during the Jim Crow era. Everything in the house, with the exception of the telephone in the hallway, belong to the Pope family. There have been additions done to the house. Originally the house had a wooden porch, in the thirties, Dr. Pope enclosed it and added the sleeping porch, which is upstairs. The shutters were added in the nineties. The floors downstairs are not original, but the upstairs floors are.
Hazel Boomer was an amazing tour guide, we began in the living room amazing pictures and family artifacts, “Dr. Pope, was born in Ridge Square, Northampton County. He had two free parents. His mother, Permelia Pope, and his father, Jonas Elias Pope, were both for free. Dr. Pope can trace his ancestry a couple of centuries because of a white great-grandfather and an African great-grandmother. We don’t know her name, we just know she was free. The great-grandfather, his name was Jonas Pope. Jonas Pope was considered a subsistence farmer, but he also bought land in the surrounding counties of Northampton in Halifax, so he had some money. I believe he might have passed out this land or some of this land to Elias Pope, Dr. Pope’s grandfather. Because of this land ownership in the family, we know that Dr. Pope was born into some type of wealth. When Jonas Salih Pope died, the newspaper reported that he was the richest man in the county. We don’t know much about his childhood, but we do have Dr. Pope’s father’s freedom paper.”
As we moved through the home it was fascinating to learn about the family roots, “His first wife’s name was Lydia. She was born in 1868, in Wynton, North Carolina, which isn’t too far from Northampton County. Lydia’s father, James Walden, was in a Union cavalry regiment during the Civil War and helped co-found a school still in Wynton, North Carolina today.”
Dr. Pope’s first wife died young, his family continued to grow and have many connections to our enduring instituions, “Dr. Pope had two daughters with his second wife, Delia. Ruth and Evelyn, Evelyn was born in 1908, and Ruth in 1910. Dr. Pope and his family were a part of civic and political activities. Dr. Pope was a mason, and he belonged to the Prince Hall Lodge. We also believe that Delia was a part of the Eastern Stars, she had a cosmetology business and was trained in the Madam CJ Walker method. Daughter Evelyn was a librarian, she retired as the dean of library sciences at North Carolina Central University. Ruth was a school teacher, taught home economics. Both of them went to Shaw, and both of them went to Columbia in New York to get their master’s degrees.”
The location of the home is a story within itself, “This was the color line. Middle-class people, businesses put their houses on the front of south Wilmington street. Then behind Dr. Pope’s house, which would have been Stronachs Alley, where working class African Americans thrived and engaged in intellectual persuits. Dr. Pope bought the land 122 years ago.”
It does not take long to move through the well maintained and quaint home. As we wrapped up the tour I had questions for Hazel about being a museum eductor in such a history and overlooked home, “We get a lot of people, a diverse range of people from different political backgrounds. Different walks of life coming in and learning about Dr. Pope and the neighborhood. Different people coming in with different types of information, we hear a lot of comments when we talk about fusion politics and the race massacre in Wilmington and how that’s intertwined with Dr. Pope running for mayor. We talk about the differences between Republican and Democrat at that time… I use this house as a jumping off point to tell the history of not only Dr. Pope but, but Raleigh, North Carolina in general. This house, you can talk about so much history here. You can tell the story of other people’s lives here because this house itself has been here for a very long time and became a museum. There’s really nothing left of the third ward because of how it’s been developed.”
We discussed the impact the City of Raleigh’s decision to put resources into preservation has had on the community, “I’m very thankful for the fact that the city of Raleigh is beginning to invest in the black history of Raleigh because when I began, in 2019 as a museum educator, first of all, I didn’t know about the city of Raleigh Museum. I didn’t know about the Pope House. I didn’t know anything about Dr. Pope. I didn’t know that he was the first licensed African American doctor in North Carolina. One of the first, and he was in the first class. I’m very thankful that Top Green exists and it’s becoming a historical center for black Raleighites. I am thankful to have the Turner House. The Turner House is another historic house that is operated by a descendant of the Turner family. And just like the Pope House, a lot of the original items belong to that family. They have a very long history. I’m thankful for the friends of Oberlin for keeping up the fight to preserve the history of Oberlin Park, because these places are important. They are significant to the community.”
Hazel concluded, “We are stewards of this, this house. I do my best to keep the grounds clear. I do my best to represent this family. Telling the truth and being honest if I don’t know something. I don’t do it by myself. Many museum educators who are dedicated, who really love this house, and who want to see this house grow have helped. I’m very thankful, especially to the Friends of the City of Raleigh Museum and other Pope House managers who worked here, because, without them, I wouldn’t be able to build upon this museum, to build upon programing. I’m very happy that I don’t have to start from nothing. I really do stand on the shoulders of other previous museum educators and managers.”
If you’re interested in learning more two programs are happening in November. November 15th, come learn about the St. Agnes Hospital and Dr. Lawson A. Scruggs, who was in Dr. Pope’s graduating class. November 16, is a specialized tour with Shaw University’s archives. They have medical school items, and will be talking about medicines in the 19th and early 20th century.
