Edith D. Pope

Edith D. Pope (1869-1947) was an American editor. She was the second editor of the Confederate Veteran from 1914 to 1932, and she helped promote the Lost Cause of the Confederacy.

Early life
Edith Drake Pope was born in 1869 to a slaveholding dynasty. She grew up on her family plantation, the John Pope House, in Burwood, Tennessee. She graduated from the (now defunct) Tennessee Female College in Franklin, Tennessee.

Career
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. When he died in December 1913, she became its editor until her retirement in 1932. Pope was an active member of the United Daughters of the Confederacy. She was the president of its Nashville chapter from 1927 to 1930, and its recording secretary from 1930 to 1935. She helped install the Matthew Fontaine Maury Monument in Richmond, Virginia and the Tennessee Confederate Women's Monument in Nashville. She was also a member of the Confederate Memorial Literary Society, 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.

Death
Pope died on January 27, 1947 in Burwood, Tennessee.