Upon graduating with Honors from Booker T. Washington High School in 1955, Roslyn Pope attended Spelman College where she was awarded the Charles Merrill, Jr. Scholarship to study abroad in Paris.

In Paris, Pope lived freely without the constraints she had often experienced as a Black woman in the segregated South; however, once she returned to Atlanta, Pope was reminded of Jim Crow’s dehumanizing inequalities and wanted to take action.

In 1960, Pope learned of the drugstore sit-in by four North Carolina A&T students and she, along with Morehouse students Julian Bond and Lonnie King, decided to start a movement.

In order to articulate the movement’s motives to the six presidents in the Atlanta University Center, Pope was asked to write the document that would appeal to the presidents.
After an all-nighter, Pope penned “An Appeal for Human Rights” which immediately became the guide for the Atlanta Student Movement—the movement that pushed for the desegregation of public and private institutions.

Research by: Salimata Sacko, Daviona Stansberry, and Jasir Torres