Content warning: This piece includes an account of an apparent suicide.
Almost 50 years before Rosa Parks defied segregation laws on an Alabama bus, another civil rights activist, Barbara Pope, refused to leave the “whites only” compartment of a passenger train, sued the railroad, and won. Her bold act had a ripple effect on the Civil Rights Movement, changing the strategy of activists working to undo Jim Crow-era segregation in the 20th century.
In the fight for justice, Pope is just one of the unsung heroes who stared down discrimination, despite the consequences on her life, family, and happiness. Yet despite her contributions to racial justice, Pope’s sudden death all but erased her legacy in history. Here’s her story.
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A family rooted in resistance
Barbara Pope’s defiant stand against segregation was shaped by a deep-rooted legacy of activism in her family. Her grandmother, Barbara Cole Williams, was enslaved on the Georgetown estate of Tudor Place, a mansion owned by Martha Custis Peter, a granddaughter of Martha Washington.
Williams frequently tested the limits of her bondage by secretly attending dances in Georgetown. When caught, the Peters punished her by sending her to their rural Maryland plantation. But this never stopped Williams from dancing, and at the end of her punishment, the Peters always brought her back to Tudor Place.
In 1829, Williams gave birth to twin girls. One died as an infant and the other was Pope’s mother, Hannah. Family accounts and DNA evidence support that the twins’ biological father was a Peter family male, likely one of Martha Peter’s sons. But family connection and the fact that Hannah Pope was technically related to Martha Washington did not affect her status. She remained enslaved at Tudor Place until the Peter family sold her to a neighbor, Colonel John Carter, in 1845.
At the Carter’s residence, Hannah Cole met her future husband and Barbara Pope’s father, Alfred Pope. While Barbara Pope’s maternal side of the family had a defiant streak, her father was even more bold in his resistance. In 1848, he and approximately 76 enslaved men, women, and children boarded a ship named The Pearl with the intent of sailing from D.C. to a free state in the North. They traveled for three days until their enslavers noticed their absence and captured the ship at the edge of the Chesapeake Bay. This escape attempt failed, but Alfred Pope did not have to wait long for his freedom. Just two years later, Colonel Carter died and freed the rebellious Pope family in his will.
“Miss Pope has a mind of her own”
Born the fifth of 10 children in 1858, Pope came of age during a crucial time for Black people in America. After the Civil War ended in 1865, recently freed persons flocked to Washington, D.C. for work and educational opportunities. Alfred Pope served as an early trustee for the Colored Schools of Washington and Georgetown, which established segregated public schools and curriculums for formerly enslaved Black students.
Pope herself started teaching in D.C.’s Black schools at the age of 16. However, Pope had strong opinions about the direction of the District’s schools and frequently clashed with its leaders. Her career as an educator ended abruptly after an incident in 1888 in which a male student physically assaulted her. She believed the student should be expelled, but school leaders allowed the student to return pending an apology. Feeling unsupported by school leadership, Pope resigned.
Leaving teaching did not end Pope’s scholarly pursuits or social activism. In addition to working with Black female advocates such as Harriet Tubman, Mary Church Terrell, Anna Julia Cooper, and Helen A. Cook, Pope began writing fiction. Her first known published story was in an 1896 issue of the Waverley Magazine. Entitled “The New Woman,” the story addressed the patriarchy and racism that young educated Black women faced in society. She risked condemnation by family and peers by taking such a radical feminist stance, but as one newspaper pointed out, “Miss Pope has a mind of her own and does not entertain any fear of expressing her own ideas and opinions.”
Pope felt confident enough in her writing that she submitted four stories for inclusion in the “Exhibit of American Negroes” for the Paris Exhibition of 1900. Civil rights activist W.E.B. DuBois organized the exhibition, with the goal of showing an international audience that Black Americans were accomplished, cultured, and deserving of the same rights as whites. Pope’s work was accepted and stood alongside other important Black literary figures such as Frederick Douglass and Sojourner Truth.
Before Rosa, there was Barbara
Pope’s activism would take on a new dimension when she boarded a west-bound train on the afternoon of August 7, 1906 in Washington, D.C. She was headed to Paeonian Springs — named after the mythological Greek physician to the gods — in Virginia to recover her health.
Pope had purchased a first-class seat to make the journey easier on her declining health, and had sought assurances from the Interstate Commerce Commission that she would be exempt from a Virginia state law that mandated the separation of Black and white train passengers. Pope was beginning her journey in D.C., which did not mandate segregation on transportation, and she hoped the railroad would not force her to change seats once they crossed the Potomac River into Virginia.
Upon boarding, Pope did take a few moments to evaluate the compartment of the train reserved for “colored” passengers. She found it cramped, with some seats facing backwards and occupied by two men that she later described as “rough.” With her first-class ticket, Pope chose a seat that appeared most comfortable in the “whites only” compartment.
But as soon as the train left the jurisdiction of D.C., the train’s conductor approached Pope. He demanded that she vacate the white section of the train and move to the “colored” section. Pope refused. She showed the conductor her ticket and told him that she “had a right to this seat and you have no right to ask me to leave it.” The conductor claimed that if she did not move, he would have her arrested and taken off the train. Unfazed, Pope still refused and calmly requested that if the conductor was going to remove her from the train, the least he could do was expel her before they traveled much farther from her home in D.C. Pope even suggested departing the train at its scheduled stop at the town of Nauck, which possessed a large Black community she had previously visited with her mother.
The conductor ignored this request and instead chose the town of Falls Church, Virginia, about six stops down the line, for the arrest. Falls Church had a reputation as a segregationist stronghold. The conductor likely knew the town’s mayor and police would welcome the opportunity to arrest a Black woman for defying the state’s segregation law. When the train stopped in Falls Church, two policemen boarded, grabbed Pope by the arms, and led her off the train.
From there, they detained her at the mayor’s office. Even though she posted bond, Pope was forced to stay in Falls Church until the evening when the train would stop at the station on its return to D.C. This would enable the conductor, who authorized her removal, to testify against her. The authorities brought Pope back to the train station and proceeded with a quick trial. With the conductor’s testimony, they convicted her of “violating the separate car law of the state of Virginia.” She was fined $10 plus $2 in court costs, equivalent to over $300 today.
Fighting back in the courts
Stories of Pope’s defiance attracted the attention of the Niagara Movement, which had been formed in 1905 by W.E.B. DuBois to fight against racial segregation. At their annual meeting in Harpers Ferry, West Virginia, the organization decided to financially support an appeal of Pope’s fine.
The Virginia Circuit Court heard the appeal in October and refused to overturn the conviction. However, a second attempt with the Virginia Supreme Court of Appeals in January 1907 succeeded when the state’s attorney general withdrew the charge, deciding that Virginia could not fine railroad passengers for journeys that originated outside the state. The court reversed the judgement and refunded Pope’s fine.
Pope’s success demonstrated to DuBois and the Niagara Movement that the courts could be used to hammer away at segregation laws. This strategy would be used by the Civil Rights Movement for the rest of the 20th century, and is still used today.
Still, the segregationist train laws themselves had not been overturned. Leaders of the Niagara Movement felt confident enough to file a civil suit against the railroad company that removed Pope from the train in Falls Church and sought damages totaling $50,000, or over $1.6 million today. The trial was scheduled to take place in the Supreme Court of the District of Columbia in June 1907.
Taking on the Southern Railway Company was a daring step. The railroad company’s lawyers tried to discredit Pope’s account of the incident. They portrayed the conductor as a man doing his job and Pope as an unreasonable passenger. The judge showed little sympathy for Pope and gave the jury instructions for determining its verdict that tilted in favor of the railroad.
In the end, the jury ruled that the railroad should not have forced Pope off the train, but it also did not believe she deserved financial compensation. For being arrested, detained, and humiliated, they awarded her one penny. Black newspapers printed headlines that read “Virginia Jim Crow Law Smashed,” but Pope was personally devastated. All her accomplishments could not change the fact that she was a Black woman living in a deeply discriminatory society.
A forgotten legacy
Pope’s fateful decision to not give up her “white’s only” seat may have put a dent in Virginia’s Jim Crow law, but it took a toll on her career, happiness, and health. Over the next 15 months, Pope faced criticism from family and friends — who were torn over the best strategy to achieve change — for agreeing to resist and take on the legal battle.
Suffering from mental and physical distress, on September 5, 1908, Pope was found dead hanging from a tree in a wooded area known as “Lover’s Lane” in Georgetown. According to newspaper accounts, a note pinned to her dress explained that she took her life because she had not slept since January and felt like her “brain was on fire.” She was 50 years old.
In recent years, descendants of Hannah and Alfred Pope have questioned whether newspaper accounts of Pope’s death were accurate. Murders of Black men and women who refused to accept white supremacy were tragically all-too common in the United States during the 19th and 20th centuries. Termed “lynching,” these murders rarely received much, if any, scrutiny from the white-controlled police and courts and perpetrators often avoided prosecution. Could Pope’s bold act of taking on a major railway company been too much for some to tolerate? Was her death made to look like a suicide to avoid suspicion, investigation, and prevent her from becoming a martyr for the cause? These questions continue to be explored.
Newspaper accounts of Pope’s death praised her “remarkable intellect” and highlighted her career as an educator and author. But no one mentioned her year-long court battles against segregation. Perhaps the stigma of suicide made her an undesirable heroine for the leaders of the Civil Rights Movement during her life. But today, as America is reckoning with its dark past and considering how to commemorate the 250th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence in 2026, there is an opportunity to restore the forgotten stories of people whose individual acts of courage created a more just society.
This article was produced with Made By Us, a coalition of more than 200 history museums working to connect with today's youth.
