Anne Spencer

Anne Spencer
Anne Bethel Spencer in her wedding dress, 1900
Born	Annie Bethel Bannister (1882-02-06)February 6, 1882 Henry County, Virginia
Died	July 27, 1975(1975-07-27) (aged 93) Lynchburg, Virginia
Alma mater	Virginia Seminary
Genre	poetry
Literary movement	Harlem Renaissance

Anne Bethel Spencer (born Bannister; February 6, 1882 – July 27, 1975) was an American poet, teacher, civil rights activist, librarian, and gardener. She was a prominent figure of the

Anne Bethel Bannister was born in Henry County, Virginia, to Joel Cephus Bannister and Sarah Louise Scales, African Americans who were determined to make a better life for their daughter. Her parents worked on a plantation after their marriage. Although her father Joel was born a slave in 1862, Anne's parents were part of the first generation of African Americans whose childhood followed the abolition of slavery. Looking at her previous 5 generations, they were also all enslaved.

As an only child, Anne was the center of her parents' affections, though they separated over differences in ideas about child rearing. After the separation, Anne Bannister was then known as Anne Scales, taking her mother's maiden name. Mother and daughter moved to West Virginia and settled in Bramwell, a town whose acceptance of African Americans and immigrants was unusual for the time. Anne lodged in the home of the Dixie family while her mother worked as a cook at a local inn. William T. Dixie, a proprietor of his own barber shop, his wife, Willie Belle, and their five children, were prominent members of the African American community.^[3]

As a lodger in the Dixie household, Anne did not perform chores or attend school, although she grew up alongside the Dixie children who routinely performed household chores and attended school locally.

While at the Virginia Seminary Anne met fellow student Charles Edward Spencer, whom she married on May 15, 1901, at the Dixie's home in Bramwell. In 1903, the Spencers moved permanently to Lynchburg and built a home at 1313 Pierce Street where they raised three children together, two daughters, Bethel and Alroy, and a son, Chauncey Spencer. Chauncey continued his mother's legacy of activism, playing a prominent role of military service during World War II. Chauncey's actions and determination led to the formation of the Tuskegee Airmen and he became a noted member of the group during a time when African Americans were refused military service as pilots.^[9][10]

In the early years of Anne's writing career, she worked at an all Black high school known as the Paul Laurence Dunbar High School for extra income when her children began attending college.^[11] At the school, she worked as a librarian from 1923 to 1945.^[12] The library consisted of a rather small collection of books, which resulted in Spencer bringing books from her own collection to add to the library.^[6]

Literary life

Anne Spencer's literary life began while she was a student at the Virginia Seminary where she wrote her first poem, "The Skeptic," which is now lost. She continued to write poetry throughout her life, using any scrap of paper or garden catalogue page that was handy to record her thoughts. Spencer's poems spoke of race, nature, and the harsh realities of the world that she lived in.^[13] Her work would go on to be widely anthologized. Spencer's career as a poet began in 1919, when she planned to open an NAACP chapter in Lynchburg. Anne Spencer hosted James Weldon Johnson, a traveling representative for the NAACP. It was during this visit in 1919 that Johnson discovered Anne's poetry, and working through H.L. Mencken, Johnson's own editor, Anne's first poem, "Before the Feast at Shushan," was published in the February 1920 issue of The Crisis. She was 40 years old at the time her first poem was published.

The majority of Spencer's work was published during the 1920s, during the

Anne Spencer died at the age of 93 on July 27, 1975, and is buried in a family plot at Forest Hills Cemetery, Lynchburg alongside her husband Edward, who died in 1964. In 2016, the Library of Virginia and Dominion Power honored her as one of the Strong Men and Women in Virginia History.^[20]

The Lynchburg home in which Anne Spencer lived and worked is now a museum, the Anne Spencer House and Garden Museum. The Anne Spencer House and Garden Museum is dedicated to preserving her legacy and connection to the Harlem Renaissance.^[21] A celebrated gardener during her lifetime, Anne's garden was inextricably woven into her life and provided inspiration for much of her poetry. A garden house, the one-room retreat, called Edankraal, where Anne did much of her writing, is also part of the property. Anne Spencer's papers, related family papers, and books from her personal library all reside at the Albert and Shirley Small Special Collections Library at the University of Virginia. Some of Anne Spencer's personal correspondence with James Weldon Johnson, specifically selected by her, are part of the James Weldon Johnson Memorial Collection at the Beinecke Rare Books and Manuscripts Library at Yale University.

Much of her poetry was deeply connected to her garden. She used her garden and the plants she grew there symbolically in many of her poems, among them, "Grapes, Still Life." One of her most influential works was "White Things", though it was not republished in her lifetime after its initial appearance in The Crisis. Nevertheless, its impact was such that Keith Clark, in Notable Black American Women, referred to it as "the quintessential 'protest' poem."^[22] Still poetically active up to her death in 1975, Anne Spencer wrote one of her most evocative poems, titled for that same year, "1975."

In 2019, the United States Postal Service announced that Spencer would be featured on a 2020 Forever stamp honoring figures of the Harlem Renaissance. Others in the quartet include writer Alain Locke; novelist Nella Larsen; and historian Arturo Alfonso Schomburg.^[23]

References