| Edith Drake Pope | |
| Birth Date: | 1869 |
| Birth Place: | Williamson County, Tennessee, U.S. |
| Death Date: | January 27, 1947 |
| Death Place: | Williamson County, Tennessee, U.S. |
| Alma Mater: | Tennessee Female College |
| Occupation: | Editor |
| Parents: | William Campbell Pope Mary Caroline Drake |
Edith D. Pope (1869 – 1947) was an American editor. She was the second editor of the Confederate Veteran from 1914 to 1932, and the president of the Nashville No. 1 chapter of the United Daughters of the Confederacy from 1927 to 1930. She played a critical role in the promotion of the Lost Cause of the Confederacy.
Edith Drake Pope was born in 1869 to a former slaveholding family.[1] She grew up in Williamson County, "less than one mile" from the John Pope House in Burwood, Tennessee, built by her paternal great-grandfather.[1] Her father, William Campbell Pope, served in the Confederate States Army during the American Civil War of 1861–1865.[1] She had two brothers and three sisters.[1]
Pope graduated from the (now defunct) Tennessee Female College in Franklin, Tennessee, in 1888.[1]
Pope began her career as Sumner Archibald Cunningham's secretary; Cunningham was the founder and editor of the Confederate Veteran, a monthly magazine about veterans of the Confederate States Army.[2] When he died in December 1913, she became its editor until her retirement in 1932.[3] Pope was an active member of the United Daughters of the Confederacy.[4] She was the president of the Nashville No. 1 chapter from 1927 to 1930, and its recording secretary from 1930 to 1935.[4] She helped install the Matthew Fontaine Maury Monument in Richmond, Virginia, and the Tennessee Confederate Women's Monument in Nashville.[4] She was also a member of the Confederate Memorial Literary Society,[4] which established the Museum of the Confederacy in Richmond; it was later renamed the American Civil War Museum. Pope also played a key role in the construction of Confederate Memorial Hall at Peabody College (now Vanderbilt University) in Nashville, where she made sure the college would also teach a course on Southern history.[5]
Pope supported the Ku Klux Klan and Jim Crow laws.[1] She was a proponent of the "repatriation" of African-American United States citizens to Africa, and she was nostalgic about the American Colonization Society.[1]
Pope resided in the West End neighborhood of Nashville, next to Centennial Park and Vanderbilt University.[1]
Pope died on January 27, 1947, in Burwood, Tennessee.[4]