Mural honors Black Girl Scout and Civil Rights hero

Berndt Petersen
·2 min read
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Channel 2 Action News takes a deep dive into the history of the first Black Girl Scouts in Atlanta.

The story is now being told on the side of a building in the city’s Sweet Auburn community.

Channel 2’s Berndt Petersen was along Auburn Avenue, where the mural is impossible to miss.

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Cheryl Pope Clark has fond memories of growing up around a lady she says was larger than life.

“We were driving down Auburn Avenue and we looked back. When I looked back I just stopped,” Clark said.

It’s a huge mural of Clark’s aunt Roslyn Pope, a Girl Scout who made history.

“It’s an untold story. Maybe an unrecognized story. When you put it on the side of a wall, it becomes a conversation. A discussion. It becomes a discovery,” the Girl Scouts of Greater Atlanta’s Kat Marran said.

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Eighty years ago Roslyn Pope was a founding member of Atlanta’s first all-Black Girl Scout troop. In 1944, Troop V met in what’s known as the Atlanta Daily World building in the Sweet Auburn community.

Many of those girls went on to do important work during the Civil Rights Movement.

As a student at Spelman College, Pope authored a document known as “An Appeal for Human Rights,” and launched a nonviolent campaign of boycotts and sit-ins by Black college students who were protesting discrimination.

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The Girl Scouts hope the mural will help tell the story.

“I’ve been hearing stories about people stopping and taking pictures. What they’ll do is Google Roslyn Pope and see a lot of things about her and the person she was and the hero she is,” Clark said.

Pope passed away earlier this year.

The Girl Scouts will officially dedicate the mural next January or February.

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