Mrs. Gladys Rhodes Pope was a first and second grade teacher at Leal Elementary School. She was born in Danville, Illinois in the late 1930s. When Mrs. Pope was a little girl, she told all the other children on her block that she was having a surprise birthday party for herself. She started setting the table outside when her mother came out and asked what she was doing. Gladys told her mom about the birthday party but her mom was the one who was surprised! Her mother went into the kitchen and baked a cake. When Gladys was growing up her mother, her sister, and her grandmother went with her to the St. Paul Baptist Church in Danville. She currently attends Bethel A.M.E. Church in Champaign. She remembers a lot about how the older people in the church loved and cared for everyone.
During her life Mrs. Pope has experienced discrimination and racism. An example of that was once Gladys, her sister, and their uncle were visiting Columbus, Kentucky. The two sisters went to a record sale and got in the white line by accident to pay for their records. The clerk didn't want to sell the record to them and asked why they were in the white line. Just then their uncle came over to them and said that his nieces were from the North, and up there people didn't have segregated lines. Gladys and her family lived with other black families on the West side of Danville. The neighborhood children attended Jackson School, an all-black school but Gladys' mother wanted her daughters to go to Washington School to be exposed to white people. It was a mile away from their home. In those days children could not eat lunch at school. This meant that Gladys and her sister had to walk halfway home where they met their mother who gave them their lunch, which they ate on their way back to school. One of the teachers wouldn't let black children play her autoharp. Black students were not allowed to swim in the high school swimming pool. It wasn't until Gladys became a sophomore that the rules changed.
When Paul Lawrence Pope and his wife Gladys Pope bought a house on East Michigan Avenue in Urbana, someone came and tore up their sod and broke the front window of their new home. Fortunately a neighbor helped them solve the problem.
Mrs. Pope graduated from Parkland College, then she graduated from the University of Illinois in Elementary Education in 1978. While she was in college, she and her husband raised three children, Katherine, Elizabeth, and Paul Martin. Over the years Mrs. Pope and her husband have cared for several foster children. Mrs. Pope has spent most of her life working with War on Poverty programs, as a neighborhood aide in Burch Village, and as a parent coordinator for Champaign County Head Start. She is also active in the Prairie AIDS Foundation. On Thursday, February 20, 1992 the YWCA had a celebration of black women's achievements at the University of lllinois and awarded Mrs. Pope a Racial Justice Award.
Mrs. Pope has been teaching for 14 years. She really enjoys teaching reading and drama. She feels good about teaching and she learns a lot too. She became a teacher because she saw a need for more black teachers in the Urbana School District.
At Bethel A.M.E. Church she is an A.M.E. Stewardess and Missionary. She has mentored high risk students; she received the Y.W.C.A. Black Achievement Award Honoree in 1998; the Baha'i Community Award - 1987; Martin Luther King A.M.E. Award - 1989; Bethel A.M.E. Missionary of the Year - 1999; A.M.E. Outstanding Service Award - 1997. Her hobbies include collecting plates, commemorating churches, writing short plays and poetry. She published a poem, "Mrs. Lucy's Fine Lace". Her activities include gifts and support for community programs, sponsored by POPE FOR PEACE Foundation.