Roslyn Pope, Student Civil Rights Activist And 'An Appeal For Human Rights' Author, Dies At 84

Before entering Spelman, Pope was an outstanding student who was the first female student body president of her high school.

She had also been a member of Atlanta’s first Black Girl Scout troop and was the only non-white girl sent to a national scout convention in Wyoming in 1951, representing Georgia even as the state remained deeply segregationist. While a student at Spelman, Pope engaged in a study abroad program in Paris. The segregation she returned to in Georgia felt all the more oppressive after having lived a life of freedom in France.

Soon after returning to Atlanta, Pope founded the Atlanta Student Movement with Morehouse students Lonnie King and Julian Bond. They were inspired by the February 1960 student sit-ins in Greensboro, N.C.

Looking to engage in similar student activism in Atlanta, a “progressive” city that nonetheless enforced segregation and oppression against Black residents. Once Pope began organizing students at nearby schools, the administrations of these colleges initially attempted to discourage such radical activism, eventually convincing the students to write up their plans. Pope wrote the document, assisted by future NAACP President Bond. Spelman professor and future best-selling author Howard Zinn lent the students his typewriter and apartment for the endeavor.

The document Pope wrote, “An Appeal For Human Rights,” laid out the case for immediate student nonviolent resistance in the face of segregation and racism.

“We do not intend to wait placidly for those which are already legally and morally ours to be meted out to us at a time,” Pope wrote.

Calling her fellow students to action, the document proclaimed “that we cannot tolerate in a nation professing democracy and among people professing democracy, and among people professing Christianity, the discriminatory conditions under which the Negro is living today in Atlanta Georgia — supposedly one the most progressive cities in the South.” Pope signed the document as student body president of Spelman, alongside the student presidents of Morehouse, Atlanta University, Clark College, Morris Brown College and Interdenominational Theological Center.

Although many white publications refused to publish Pope’s manifesto, it was printed in several Atlanta-area papers and later picked up by The New York Times and the Harvard Crimson, among others. A New York Senator also placed the statement in the Congressional Record. After the publication of Pope’s manifesto, 1960 saw students across Atlanta engaging in nonviolent protests throughout the city, including demonstrations and sit-ins. Martin Luther King, Jr. was arrested in Atlanta in October alongside student protestors.

Pope herself participated in several protests but faded into the background as she graduated from Spelman. After earning her masters’ and doctorate degrees, she went on to have careers in academia, music and advertising. Though she never reached the level of national fame that other Civil Rights era leaders achieved, her legacy remains strong throughout Atlanta and around the country.