Evelyn Pope

Evelyn Bennett Pope (August 17, 1908 – September 14, 1995) was an American librarian. She worked as a law librarian at the North Carolina Central University School of Law before serving as Dean of Library Sciences at the university.

Early life, family, and education Pope was born in 1908 in Raleigh, North Carolina to Manassa Thomas Pope, a doctor and businessman who was the first Black man to receive a medical license in North Carolina, and Delia Haywood Phillips, an educator and representative for a company owned by Madam C. J. Walker. She was a great-great-granddaughter of the planter and enslaver John Haywood, who served as North Carolina State Treasurer and as the Raleigh's Intendant of Police.

Pope and her younger sister, Ruth, grew up at 511 S Wilmington Street, a large brick house in the Fourth Ward neighborhood that their father built in 1901. The Popes were a wealthy family that were leaders within the city's African-American middle class.

Personal life In her later years, Pope returned to her childhood home and died there in 1995.