Who was South Bend Community Hall of Fame inductee Helen Pope?

SOUTH BEND, Ind.—During the 1950s and 1960s, Helen Pope was a community and civil rights activist in South Bend, as well as a nurse at a hospital she worked to desegregate.

Pope attended Linden School and Central High before becoming a polio nurse at Northern Indiana Children’s Hospital in South Bend.

She worked for the South Bend Community School Corporation’s STEP program for at-risk youth.

In 1999, Pope was inducted into the South Bend Community Hall of Fame.

Indiana University South Bend created a Helen Pope Memorial Scholarship in her honor to recognize undergraduate and graduate students who are active participants in the Civil Rights Heritage Center.

Artifacts from Pope’s life, including oral histories done by Pope herself, as well as letters and features in ‘The Reformer’ publication, are available through the Civil Rights Heritage Center’s Digital Archives.