Anne Spencer
Anne Spencer was an influential African American poet born on February 6, 1882, in Henry County, Virginia. Despite not publishing a collection of poetry during her lifetime, her work is recognized for its depth and insight, and she is frequently anthologized today. Spencer's early life was marked by significant change; after her parents' separation, she moved to West Virginia, where she excelled academically, graduating as valedictorian from Lynchburg's Virginia Seminary at seventeen. Throughout the 1920s, she published several poems in notable literary venues, yet she refrained from compiling her works into a single volume, leading to the survival of approximately fifty complete poems.
Spencer's home became a gathering place for prominent writers, including W. E. B. Du Bois and Langston Hughes, highlighting her role in the Harlem Renaissance. She was also active in her community, organizing the Lynchburg chapter of the NAACP and serving as a librarian at Dunbar High School. Her legacy has been revived through subsequent publications and films, ensuring her contributions to American literature and culture are recognized and celebrated. Anne Spencer passed away on July 25, 1975, but her impact continues to resonate with poets and scholars alike.
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Anne Spencer
Writer
- Born: February 6, 1882
- Birthplace: Henry County, Virginia
- Died: July 27, 1975
- Place of death: Lynchburg, Virginia
Biography
Although she did not publish a single volume of poetry in her lifetime, African American poet Anne Spencer is today remembered as a writer of perceptiveness and ability whose work is often anthologized. Born on a plantation in Henry County, Virginia, on February 6, 1882, Annie Bethel Bannister was the only child of Joel Cephus Bannister and Sarah Louise Scales. Her parents separated when she was six, and her mother took her to Bramwell, West Virginia, where due to financial circumstances she was placed with foster parents in the home of William T. Dixie. Spencer then entered Lynchburg’s Virginia Seminary at the age of eleven and graduated as valedictorian at the age of seventeen, in 1899. Her poem “The Skeptic” was written while there (1896), but not published; she also met her future husband, Edward Spencer. They married on May 15, 1901, and eventually had three children.
In 1918 Spencer met and befriended James Weldon Johnson, writer and field secretary for the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). Johnson introduced Spencer to H. L Mencken, who helped Spencer get into Crisis magazine with her first published poem, “Before the Feast at Shushan” (1920); however, Spencer later declined Mencken’s patronage. Throughout the 1920’s, she was published in such venues as Johnson’s Book of American Negro Poetry (1922) and Countee Cullen’s Caroling Dusk (1927), as well as some journals. Because she rejected an editorial process that censored much of her writing, however, her poetry was never collected in a volume of her own. All that remains of her considerable output is about fifty complete poems.
Spencer’s home in Lynchburg became a salon attracting writers such as W. E. B. Du Bois, Langston Hughes, and Gwendolyn Brooks. She maintained a private garden, still tended to today at her Lynchburg home by the Friends of Anne Spencer Memorial Foundation; organized Lynchburg’s NAACP chapter; and opened a library at the African American Dunbar High School. When her children entered college, Spencer became the librarian at Dunbar to supplement her income.
Spencer died on July 25, 1975. Although so little of her poetic output survived, she was brought back into public light by the timely publication of J. Lee Greene’s Time’s Unfailing Garden: Anne Spencer’s Life and Poetry (1977) and by the documentary filmEchoes from the Garden: The Anne Spencer Story (1980).