On South Wilmington Street, one of Raleigh’s few bastions of the past stands seemingly frozen in time.
The Pope House’s rustic brick exterior and aging white paint looks nearly identical to when it was first built in 1901. But by August, the Pope House will take another step back in time, featuring restorative renovations that staff hope will give visitors a clearer look into Raleigh’s Black history.
To Hazel Boomer, manager at the Pope House, this small house is far greater than its size.
“I always say that the house is small but mighty because of the ton of history that just exists in this place,” Boomer says.
The Pope House is one of just a few African American house museums in North Carolina. While it’s currently closed for the renovations, during this Juneteenth month its staff continue their work to share the rich Black history of both Raleigh and the family that originally occupied the home.
Margaret Damghani, a museum educator at the Pope House, says the renovations are an opportunity to improve the museum’s programming.
“We’re using the renovation as a way to try to tell this really complicated history but also take advantage of the fact that this house is still here with all this stuff,” Damghani says.
Alongside structural renovations, Boomer says the Pope House staff intend to add some important upgrades, including interpretive signage, additional classroom space, and a garden fully stocked with plants Dr. Manassa Thomas Pope would have used in his medical practice.
“We are expecting to try and find medicinal flowers and herbs, because we actually found his medical remedies,” says Boomer. “We would like to incorporate that and use that to talk about medicine in the 19th and 20th century, because we talk about Dr. Pope, we talk about the family, but we don’t really talk about what it was like being a doctor and being a Black doctor in those times.”
Additionally, Boomer says new classroom space will help the Pope House support more visitors.
“In March, we had two large school groups come by the Pope House, and … we didn’t fit them all in,” Boomer says. “We broke them up into four groups and we had different programming, and that was very successful. But that will help us host these large school groups and other groups more often due to some of the space that we will have.”
The final change to the Pope House will be the addition of two rooms formerly closed off to visitors: the Pope bedroom and the kitchen. With these new rooms, Boomer says the museum can display more items from its collection.
Dr. Pope built the Pope House in 1901. Pope was not only one of the first licensed Black doctors in North Carolina but one of only seven people of color in Raleigh registered to vote.
It was through his right to vote that Pope ran for mayor in 1919, becoming the first Black man to do so in the South during the Jim Crow era. He didn’t win, but Calvin Lightner, an architect, businessman, and the father of Raleigh’s first Black mayor, Clarence Lightner, who was elected in 1973, later recalled Pope’s historic run.
“We knew we wouldn’t win, and if we did win the whites wouldn’t let us administer, but we did it to wake our people up politically,” Calvin Lightner said.
The Pope House sits on what was the color line of the Third Ward, which segregated the historically Black neighborhood from others around it.
Despite how small the house appears today, it was considered a mansion at the time. Boomer says many similar buildings would have surrounded Pope’s home, ranging from small businesses and churches to hospitals.
“It’s very hard to imagine this area had a lot of people living here, but this house represents what was here,” Boomer says.
Throughout the 1900s, Pope’s two daughters, Evelyn Pope and Ruth Pope, preserved the family home. In 2000, the house was turned into a museum.
Robyn Herndon, program manager for the City of Raleigh Museum, says the Pope House sets itself apart by showing that people can learn about Black history without referencing plantations.
“It’s so great, really, to tell 100 years of history without really having to reference that,” Herndon says. “There are so many accomplishments of Dr. Pope and the Pope family and the community that it’s just history.”
Boomer also says the Pope House sets itself apart from other museums this way.
“A lot of Black Americans, especially when it comes to media, feel like the only media that kind of represents them when it comes to history is either slavery or the civil rights movement, there’s no in between,” Boomer says.
To Boomer, the Pope House isn’t just a museum but a place to uplift Black visitors and allow them to connect to Black history.
“I think of it as a home,” Boomer says. “Because in the larger sense, African Americans have a harder time finding their ancestry due to enslavement. Because you don’t have that ancestry, it’s very hard to grasp the history. But [the Pope House] represents a physical history, a physical ancestry that I believe all Black Americans can connect to.”
While the Pope House remains closed until August, staff will continue free walking tours of the Third Ward from June 15 to August 18 on Saturdays from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. and on Sundays from 1 to 3 p.m.
Correction: The Pope House is one of just a few African American house museums in North Carolina, but it is not the only one. The story has been updated with the correction.
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