Who is Anne Spencer?
Anne Spencer was a poet, civil rights advocate, teacher, librarian, wife, mother, and gardener. Most notably, Anne Spencer was an accomplished poet and figure of the Harlem Renaissance, the black literary and cultural movement of the 1920s, with over thirty poems published in her lifetime. A visit from Langston Hughes in 1916 and James Weldon Johnson in 1919 encouraged her poetic talents. Her work gained the respect and attention of other prominent writers like W. E. B. DuBois and Sterling A. Brown and ultimately led Anne to become the second African American poet to be included in the Norton Anthology of Modern Poetry (1973).
Drawing of Edankraal, Sandra B Wiley, 1977
In addition to her writing, Anne played an active role in improving the legal, social, and economic conditions of African Americans’ lives in Lynchburg, Virginia. She helped found the Lynchburg chapter of the NAACP in 1913 and worked as a beloved librarian at the all-black Dunbar High School, expanding the literary opportunity for her students. The Spencer home on Pierce Street became a salon for many notable guests and offered hospitality to African American travelers when laws of segregation barred them from hotels and fine dining. Anne occupied the rest of her time in her garden and writing cottage, Edankraal.
Early Life
Anne Spencer was born Annie Bethel Scales Bannister to Joel Cephus Bannister and Sarah Louise Scales on February 6, 1882, on a farm in Henry County, Virginia. Both parents were of mixed lineage. Her father, born a slave in Henry County in 1862, was of black, white, and Seminole Indian ancestry. Her mother was born about 1866 on the Rock Spring Plantation in Critz, Virginia in neighboring Patrick County. According to Spencer's biographer J. Lee Greene, Sarah Louise Scales’ mother was a former slave and her father was a member of the wealthy Virginia tobacco family, Reynolds, “well known in American aristocracy.” Soon after Annie was born, the family moved to Martinsville, where her father opened a saloon. Within a few years, the parents separated, and her mother took Annie to Bramwell, West Virginia, where she placed Annie in the foster care of William Dixie and his wife, a prominent black couple, so that Sarah Scales could work full time.
Virginia Theological Seminary and College, c. 1920,
University of Virginia Special Collections
Education
Both her father and mother sought formal education for Annie, not in the inferior segregated public schools in West Virginia but in a relatively new preparatory and college institution for African Americans. In 1893, Scales brought Annie to Lynchburg to attend the Virginia Theological Seminary and College, pretending that the eleven-year-old who had never attended school was already twelve. The school (today the Virginia University of Lynchburg) was a pioneering Black College, offering an equal curriculum in spite of the patronizing view of its board that occupational training and literacy were enough. Although Annie arrived at the school barely literate, when she graduated six years later in 1899, she delivered the valedictory address. While in school, Annie had met fellow student Edward Alexander Spencer who tutored her in math and sciences while she helped him with languages.
Life in Lynchburg
Anne and Edward married in 1901 and two years later moved into the Queen Anne-style home Edward had designed and built for them at 1313 Pierce Street in Lynchburg. Edward would later become Lynchburg's first parcel postman, which he combined with his other entrepreneurial talents in construction and business. The couple had three children: daughters Bethel Calloway and Alroy Sarah, and a son, Chauncey Edward. Both Anne and Edward Spencer had made the most of their educations and sent their three children to college, in part through her earnings as a librarian. Later there were ten grandchildren, and the Pierce Street home was expanded and enhanced to accommodate their frequent visits.
Anne, Edward and their daughters in the garden, c. 1929
Career
Throughout her life, Anne Spencer played an active role in improving the legal, social, and economic conditions of African Americans’ lives in Lynchburg, Virginia. Anne taught at Virginia Seminary from 1910 until 1912 where she met Mary Rice Hayes, the widow of the Seminary’s former president and current faculty member. The two engaged in much cultural discussion at the Seminary and eventually decided that Lynchburg needed its own branch of the NAACP. In 1913, Anne and Edward Spencer, alongside Mary Rice Hayes and other community members, founded the Lynchburg Chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), holding the meeting to develop the charter in their living room. James Weldon Johnson traveled to Lynchburg to help set up the Lynchburg NAACP. It is during this time that he discovered Anne’s literary talents and encouraged her to publish her writing. Read more about Anne’s literary career here.
In 1924, Anne brought a copy of her publications to her interview for a position as a librarian. With this literary credibility, she was able to persuade the Lynchburg school board to let her lead the first library open to the city’s Black citizens and started this library in the segregated Dunbar High School with a loan of her own books. Anne Spencer worked as a beloved librarian at the all-black school until 1942.
Later Life
Anne Spencer died at the age of 93 on July 27, 1975 and is buried alongside her husband Edward, who died in 1964, in the family plot at Forest Hills Cemetery in Lynchburg.
Anne Spencer papers, poetry and photographs is copyrighted. For more information, contact the Anne Spencer Memorial Foundation, Inc.
Spencer children and friends in the garden, c. 1917.
Anne and Edward Spencer with two grandchildren in the 1920s.
Anne Spencer in her garden, in front of Edankraal, 1947
Anne Spencer in her garden, c. 1925
Spencers and their friends in the garden
Edward and Anne Spencer and a friend chat while grandson Edward plays at the pond.
Edward and Anne Spencer beside the pond and birdhouse. (A pushbutton speaker is now built into a reproduction birdhouse)
Anne Spencer in later life
Anne and Edward Spencer, 1940s
Anne Spencer in her wedding dress, 1901
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Who is Chauncey Spencer?
by Chauncey E. Spencer
Broadside Press, 1975
Lynchburg, An Architectural History
by S. Allen Chambers, Jr.photography by Richard Cheek
University Press of Virginia, 1981
Literature, An Introduction to Reading and Writing
by Edgar V. Roberts and Henry e. Jacobs. 2nd., ed
Prentice-Hall, Inc. Englewood Cliffs, NJ (1989, 1987)
American Garden Writing
Gleanings from Garden Lives Then and Now
Edited by Bonnie Marranca
“The Restoration of a Poet’s Garden”
by Jane Baber White
PAJ Publications, 1988
The Heirloom Garden
Selecting and Growing over 300 Old-Fashioned Ornamentals
by JoAnn Gardner
Storey Communications, Inc., 1992
Gardens and Landscapes of Virginia
Text by Rudy J. Favretti, F.A.S.L.A.
Photography by Richard Cheek
Fort Church Publishers, Inc., 1993
Emyl Jenkins’ Southern Hospitality
Photographs by Walter Smalling, Jr.
Crown Publishers, Inc., 1994
Grandmother’s Garden
The Old-Fashioned American Garden 1865—1915
by Mae Brawley Hill
Harry N. Abrams, Inc., Publishers, 1995
Her Past Around Us
Interpreting Sites for Women’s History
Edited by Polly Welts Kaufman and Katherine T. Corbett
Krieger Publishing Company, 2003
Lynchburg 100: An Illustrated Guide to Lynchburg Landmarks
by S. Allen Chambers and Nancy B. Marion
Blackwell Press, 2007
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The New York Times, Home & Garden. (Feb. 5, 2014) House Proud. The Life of a Poet Allergic to Endings by Penelope Green.
The Washington Post (July 28, 2014) Where the Harlem Renaissance blossomed in Virginia, with poet Anne Spencer by Adrian Higgins.
In Whose Garden Did the Harlem Renaissance Grow? 100 Amazing Facts About the Negro: How segregation, soil and poetic talent nurtured a movement. Gates, Henry Louise. Roots.com Posted: Sept. 15 2014
Afro-American Women Writers 1746-1933: An Anthology and Critical Guide (1989) Shockley, Ann Allen, New Haven, Connecticut: Meridian Books ISBN 0-452-00981-2
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Shadowed Dreams: Women's Poetry of the Harlem Renaissance, Rutgers; 2 Rev Exp edition (October 25, 2006). ISBN 0-8135-3886-
Reuben, Paul P. " Chapter 9: Harlem Renaissance - Anne Spencer" in PAL:Perspectives in American Literature - A Research and Reference Guide.
The Vintage Book of African American Poetry, Edited and with Introduction by Michael S. Harper & Anthony Walton.Copyright 2000. Vintage Books, Random House Ind., New York.ISBN 0-375-70300-7
The Oxford Companion to Women’s Writing in the United States. Ed. Cathy N. Davidson, Linda Wagner-Martin.New York: Oxford University Press, 1995. Copyright © 1995 by Oxford University Press.
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Independent African: John Chilembre and the Origins, Settings and Significance of the Nyasaland Native rising of 1915. Shepperson, George, and Price, Thomas. Edinburgh, Scotland: University of Edinburgh Press. (1958)
Review of Selected Poems by Gwendolyn Brooks. Book Week. Simpson, Louis. p.25. (October 27, 1963)
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The Norton Anthology of Modern Poetry. Ellman, Richard, and O'Clair, Robert, eds. NY. W.W. Norton and Company, Inc. (1973) Note: Anne Spencer was the first Virginian and first African -American woman to be included.
The Correspondence of W.E.B. Dubois: Vol.I, Selections, 1877-1934.Amherst, Mass.: University of Massachusetts Press (1973)
Black Poets of the United States from Paul Laurence Dunbar to Langston Hughes. Translated by Kenneth Douglas. Urbana, ILL.: University of Illinois Press. (1973)
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University of Virginia, Albert & Shirley Smalls Special Collections Library. Charlottesville, VA
Anne Spencer's papers, books, and photographs
Yale University, The Carl van Vechten Collection, Collection of American Literature. The Beinecke rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale University, New Haven, Connecticut.
A small collection of Anne Spencer’s correspondence was collected from Carl Van Veckten and donated by herself for the James Weldon Johnson collection.
Yale University, James Weldon Johnson Memorial Collection of Negro Arts and Letters, Collection of American Literature. The Beinecke rare Book and manuscript Library, Yale University, New Haven Connecticut.
University of Michigan. The Chauncey Spencer Papers. Bentley Historical Library. University of Michigan Library, Ann Arbor, Michigan.
Papers, photographs, and documentation concerning the restoration of the Spencer garden are in the possession of the Southern Memorial Association at the Old City Cemetery, Lynchburg, Virginia.