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Papers of Anne Spencer and the Spencer Family, 1829, 1864-2007, #14204, Special Collections, University of Virginia Library, Charlottesville, Va.
The papers of Anne Spencer were purchased from the Anne Spencer House and Garden Museum, Lynchburg, Virginia, by the University of Virginia Library on March 10, 2008.
Anne Bethel Spencer was born an only child in Henry County, Virginia, on February 6, 1882, to Joel Cephus Bannister (1862-?) of Henry County, Virginia, and Sarah Louise Scales (1866-?) of Patrick County, Virginia. Sometime around 1883, the family moved to Martinsville, Virginia, where Joel opened a saloon. Sarah had relatives in Bramwell, West Virginia, and she moved there in either 1887 or 1888 to work in the Blue Stone Inn. Soon Anne was able to join her mother in Bramwell, where she lived with the family of the local barber, William T. Dixie and his wife, Willie Belle. In September 1893, Annie moved to Lynchburg, Virginia, at the age of eleven in order to attend Virginia Seminary for her education. She was registered there as Annie Bethel Scales in September 1893.
Anne Spencer graduated on May 8, 1899, and gave the valedictory speech during the ceremony held at Diamond Hill Baptist Church, Lynchburg. Following graduation Annie began teaching second grade in West Virginia, near Bramwell. She and Edward A. Spencer (1876-1964) were married on May 15, [1901] by the Reverend Frank Marshall in Bramwell, West Virginia, at the home of her friends, William T. and Willie Belle Dixie, and set up housekeeping in Lynchburg, Virginia. They had three children, Bethel Calloway, Alroy Sarah, and Chauncey Edward Spencer, and a fourth child who died shortly after birth with diphtheria.
Working with NAACP secretary James Weldon Johnson, she helped co-found the Lynchburg chapter of the NAACP in 1918. It was also Johnson who discovered her poetry and was instrumental in getting her first published poem, "Before the Feast of Shushan" to the public. It was published in The Crisis in February 1920. The poetry of Anne Spencer can be found in some of the period's most prestigious anthologies, including The Book of American Negro Poetry (James Weldon Johnson); Negro Poets and Their Poems (Robert T. Kelin); American Poetry Since 1900 (Louis Untermeyer); The New Negro (Alain Locke); Caroling Dusk (Countee Cullen); and The Poetry of the Negro, 1746-1949 (Langston Hughes and Arna Bontemps). Spencer is recognized as a part of the Harlem Renaissance literary movement not only because of her published poetry but her friendships with many of the other African-American writers of the time.
Anne Spencer became the librarian at the Dunbar High School in Lynchburg and worked there from about 1924 until 1946. She lived most of her adult life in Lynchburg, Virginia, chiefly at 1313 Pierce Street, where she hosted many literary and civil rights figures in her home during their visits to her area.
The papers of Anne Spencer (1882-1975) and family, 1829, and ca. 1864-2007, and undated, 4,175 items (22 Hollinger boxes, ca. 9 linear feet) consist of correspondence, photographs, manuscripts and notebooks of poetry, short stories, articles, and prose works, often fragmentary in nature and undated, financial and legal papers and volumes, and topical files.
The collection contains manuscript poems, ideas for poems, and articles by Spencer, including an autobiographical piece, 1956, sent to Lee Greene, typescript copies of some of her poems by Greene, and articles possibly written for a column in the Pittsburgh Courier, but never published. Prose manuscripts include "Bastion at Newark," "Chattel slavery or why I dislike Booker T," "Comments about herself spoken to Ben W. Fuson," "Dear children," "In the thicket" [regarding a short story by Glenway Wescott], "LeRoi meets Lincoln," and "Virginia as Narcissus."
Poetry manuscripts include "Any wife to any husband," "Ascetic," "At the carnival," "Before the feast of Shushan," "Black man o' mine," "Creed," "Dunbar," "Epitome," "For E.A.S.," "Failure," "For Jim, Easter Eve" [also titled "To James Weldon Johnson Easter Eve (1938-1948)]," "Grapes: Still-Life," "He said," "I have a friend," "Innocence," "Lady, lady," "Lemming: O Sweden," "Letter to my Sister," "Liability," "Lines to a Nasturtium," "Life-long, poor Browning," "Luther P. Jackson," "1975," "Neighbors," "Po' little lib," "Questing," "Requiem," "Rime for the Christmas baby," "The Sévignés," "Substitution," "Terrence, Terrence," "Translation," "White things," and "The Wife-woman." There are also drafts and fragments of unfinished poems she constantly revised particularly "Big Ditch and the River," "A Dream of John Brown: on his return trip home."
Themes and topics in untitled manuscripts and fragments include books and literature; family; African Americans, slavery, segregation, and civil rights; gardening and nature; historical and contemporary events and figures; politics and government particularly in Virginia; and religion.
Correspondence of Anne Spencer is chiefly with and about family, friends, fellow poets and anthologizers. Of interest are letters from Sterling A. Brown, Countee Cullen, Victor Daly, Arthur P. Davis, W.E.B. du Bois, Helen G. Edmonds, Murrell Edmunds, Ben Fuson, J. Lee Greene, Langston Hughes, Altona Trent Johns, Georgia Douglas Johnson, Grace Johnson, James Weldon Johnson, Charles S. Johnson, Alain LeRoy Locke, Harry Meacham, H. L. Mencken (copy), Amaza Meredith, Clarence Muse, Francis Coleman Rosenberger, Frank Silvera, Idella Purnell [Stone], Howard Thurman, and Carl Van Vechten, concerning her poetry and their own work. There are also letters to Andres Burris and to Cleveland Amory re Ellen Glasgow, James Branch Cabell and racism.
Topics of interest in the correspondence include Langston Hughes, Adam Clayton Powell, Claude McKay, and William Raspberry, Jim Crow laws and segregation, and the Spencer family. There are many brief comments on people in the news and current events including the Democratic Presidential Convention of 1948 and the Republican Convention of 1952.
There are numerous photographs of family and friends including Guy Bluford, Celinda Wright Humbles, Joe Louis, Amaza Meredith, Clarence Muse, and Ulysses S. Grant Patterson, as well as a Tuskegee Airmen convention and the faculty of the Virginia Theological Seminary.
Financial and legal papers chiefly concern the Lynchburg, Virginia, property management business, tax business and chicken business of Edward Spencer. Many of his business ledgers were later reused by his widow for jotting down her poetry ideas. Also present is an 1829 New Hampshire deed, an 1863 will, and the wills of Anne and her husband.
Miscellaneous material includes material pertinent to an Anne Spencer Poetry Contest, the Friends of the Anne Spencer Memorial Foundation and the Virginia Landmarks Register inclusion for the Anne Spencer House as well as facsimiles of historic African American and historic broadsides; invitations; clippings; programs; a few papers concerning Chauncey Spencer, a Tuskeegee Airman, including a blueprint for a hangar at Dothan, Ala.; mimeograph copies of poetry by Gerald William Barrax; and a rough draft of "Searching for Anne Spencer" by Pat Doyle.
The papers of Anne Spencer arrived with almost no discernible order. The current order was imposed by the processor. The papers are arranged in five series: Series I: Correspondence (Boxes 1-6); Series II: Photographs (Boxes 7-9); Series III: Financial and Legal Papers and Volumes (Boxes 9-13); Series IV: Topical Files (Boxes 13-17); and Series V: Manuscripts, both individual and in notebooks (Boxes 17-22).
Series V is also subdivided into several subseries: Subseries A: Manuscripts with a title; Subseries B: Manuscripts arranged by beginning line; Subseries C: Topical Manuscripts with no titles, arranged by subject; Subseries D: Dated Notebooks; Subseries E: Undated Notebooks; and Subseries F: Poems and Other.
Correspondence is summarized at the folder level, and while all identified correspondents are listed, not all letters are described individually. When possible, negatives have been placed in the same folder with their photographs.
Poems and manuscripts with titles have their own folder and are listed separately. Other manuscripts are arranged by the apparent topic when it can be determined. Some designations of topics by the processor are very subjective and often several different topics can be found within a single manuscript. Dated notebooks are described first, followed by the undated notebooks. Undated notebooks have been assigned an alphabet designation to keep them distinct in the guide.
Letters to Publishers, including a long draft to Mr. Bosler about the possibility of publishing a book of her work, in which she says "I don't negate my poems - they are me in the years here they are my conversation with myself" (n.d.); drafts to Mr. Ferrone concerning possible publication of her work, "For over 70 years my pencil has sought a scrap of paper - to tell the bees, so to speak, and the habit saves from whatever local aridity I would suffer - hence I try to tell my truth as I do accept the truth of those who have reverence for it" and suggests Sterling Brown, Dr. Helen Edmunds, or Dr. Ben Fuson for writing the preface (1970 March, n.d.); "Darling Critic" explaining "Once I wrote some lines - ' I Have a Friend .' I was sitting in while a lovely lady explain[ed] to the group 'she means God.' I said later and meanly , I was not excluding God. I was trying of course to memorialize memory itself not had but have - About the other pieces you ask to use, please take part of sketch from Cullen's Caroling Dusk " (n.d.); a draft to "Gentlemen" giving some information about herself (May 21, 1963); an unaddressed note giving permission to use her poems mentioned in their letter and correcting the place of her birth (n.d.); and a draft to Mr. Amory of the [ Saturday Review ?] discussing Ellen Glasgow, James Branch Cabell, and racism, "the Negro knows the white man wherever he occurs better than the white know himself: we have tracked him down into his secret recesses where he had not take a look for a long three centuries," and continues "Through an inheritance from that great people the Jew He had given the world His Especial Image, Jesus, they grabbed the Image and began at once to pogromize the giver" (n.d.)
On the title page and its verso, she writes concerning the Constitution and slavery.
In the main part of the diary, section for January, Anne Spencer writes about the Prodigal Son (January 1); the Byrds, Georgia's U.S. Senator [Richard B.] Russell, Jr., difficulty of African-Americans in dealing with "our appearance on this continent factually" (January 2); "Virginia as Narcissus" (January 3); a list of people and concepts placed in a credit column or a debit column (January 4); Notes for "Virginia as Narcissus" discussing racism and including a quote about her preference in epithets, "I choose Nigger to dear darky. Nigger given a 25 % to 50 % chance can defend me and himself but a darky is a moral queer " (January 5-11, and possibly more); the NAACP and her monetary involvement (January 11-12); mentions Roland Hayes (1887-1977) and the famous incident in the Georgia shoe store (January 13); Governor James Lindsay Almond's election, the Acts of Assembly for 1852-1854, "to read it makes one hope as in primate evolution that we have ascended from the apes," and the caste system in India compared with America (January 14-15); integration (January 16); Lindsay Almond's speech, the Byrd machine (January 18); takes issue with the statement of a Southern religionist Governor [Richard B. Russell, Jr.] teaching a "businessman's Bible class" on the radio, "only the Anglo-Saxon has exercised the art of gardening!" (January 19-21); the vanity of the state of Virginia and the editorial critical of local [Lynchburg?] Negro leadership (January 22); hatred spread world-wide through the threat of annihilation (January 23); mentions Friend to Friend: A Candid Exchange between Pearl S. Buck and Carlos P. Romulo (1958) (January 24); Narcissus (January 25); "Virginia as Narcissus or the Southern Mind" (January 26-28); Acts of the General Assembly of Virginia, passed 1853-1854 (January 29-30); the fascist campaign against the Jews and the idea of monotheism and quote from her poem "White Things" "and fling in the face of God with all your might Man-maker, make white" (January 31-February 1)
Entries by Anne Spencer under the February section include: a story from Thinking Black by Dan Crawford and examples of ways "the Southern mind has shown its determination to reconcrete slavedom polices" through Plessy v Ferguson and Jim Crowism (February 1); quotes from Raymond Moley about empathy and praises Franklin Roosevelt (February 2); discusses public schools, epithets, Sequoia, and John Trumball, tutor at Yale (February 3); warns that history must be read with caution, mentioning Palgrave, William Byrd, and John Smith, until you get to Ellen Glasgow, "her fiction is the very essence of these new world folk in their dominating situation" and James Branch Cabell (February 4); Spencer asks the question, since public schools are equal, why not mix the white children into the equalized colored schools? (February 5); quotes from her poem "White Things" (February 6); discusses Faulkner in Japan and his comments about Japan, loyalty, the truth, and integration (February 7-9); U.S. Senator Jacob Javits on integration (February 9); Alexander Pushkin and Russian literature (February 10-13); credits the African slaves and indentured debtors and criminals with producing the American nation (February 11); mention of Anselm and Arthur Koestler (February 12); describes Hodding Carter with a good face and open countenance and comments about the South filling "the cities of our land with the ghettoes and explosions of the Harlem Projects" … with no mixed jobs or places without a sign "white ladies colored women" (February 15-16); the campaign of the governor in 1959 with his vicious comments about African-Americans (February 16-17); the divisions of white society and a few lines of poetry:
Delicate distant shepherdess
And hours that run
Held by clouds
From the blazing sun (February 18);
Comments about Oliver Cromwell, Macaulay, Milton, and Harry Byrd (February 19-20); Mississippi Senator J.C. Stinnett, Robert Owen, integration conflict (February 21); Wendell Wilkie and Adlai Stevenson (February 25); hypocrisy of the South, "The South's anxious, eager even, willingness to give away an [intangible] Jesus in a far-flung all inclusive way but to keep for themselves His sheep on a thousand hills, the loaves and fishes, the hire without the work, the good part, supper in the upper room" (February 28).
Entries by Anne Spencer under the March section include: some material for the John Brown poem (March 1); a draft of her poem "Any Wife to Any Husband A Derived Poem" written on August 1972 (March 2); more material for her John Brown poem (March 4, 6, 7); paean to Abraham Lincoln (March 8-9); material for "Le Roi Meets Lincoln" or "When Abraham Lincoln Met Leroy Jones" (March 9-11); begins a manuscript piece with "There is nothing more boring than too much connubial bliss" (March 11-12). The rest of March has ink entries from the unknown original owner of the diary, but no Anne Spencer.
Entries by Anne Spencer under the April section include: states "the wild men; the red men, the black men were the foundation of their own calamity and of the white supremacy" in the New World (April 14); education (April 16); David Lee, H.L. Mencken, and public schools (April 17); Chaucer, Lowell Thomas, "yellow peril" (April 19); and "An Informal Talk to Myself on Virginia as Narcissus," part of it with the date June 1959 (April 20-21, 25-28).
Entries by Anne Spencer under the May section include: "Negro Attitude Toward Each Other" and comment by Corra Harris (May 9); [Gullah?] language (May 19); material for her John Brown poem (May 21); "Appomattox was a victory for the South" (May 24); and references to Senator Jacob Javits and Clifford Dowdey, and a more in-depth discussion of an interview between James Weldon Johnson and Editor Douglas Southall Freeman when they talked about the Racial Integrity Law (May 26-28).
There were no entries by Anne Spencer in June or July.
Entries by Anne Spencer under the August section include: the missing record in the ages of mankind is that of the Negro (August 4); the sword of Jesus a weapon against cruelty (August 8); and more material for her John Brown poem (August 12-27).
Entries by Anne Spencer under the September section include: "The Ebony Laddy" (September 26-27).
There were no entries by Anne Spencer in October.
Entries by Anne Spencer under the November section include: A family story about Edward A. Spencer and his propensity for finding useful articles, articulated by his daughter, "She learned, she said her first and only precept in chemistry: 'nothing in nature is lost.' That axiom was easy, she knew where all the would- have-been-lost things got to. Pop found them in his itinerary and brought them home." (November 10-11).
Entries by Anne Spencer under the December section include: reasons why some lack possessions (December 4); more material for her John Brown poem ((December 5, 7, 9); "being somebody" (December 8); new breed of golfers, dated August 1972 (December 9); H.L. Mencken's quote about liars (December 10); integration of public schools (December 11-12); America and sexual promiscuity, dated October 15, 1970 (December 14); dreams and two greatest peoples in the world, the Englishman and the Hebrew (December 15); slavery, hatred (December 17); slave owners and the value of slaves (December 18-19); Emerson, and England's finest hour (December 20); the essence of religion (December 21); "Everything happens for the best" (December 23); [Fair Employment Practices Commission?] (December 27); America Firsters and proles (December 30); mention of Kathleen Norris (1880-1966), Charles Lindbergh, and Kelland (December 31).
Entries by Anne Spencer in the Memoranda Pages include: Civil Rights and the right to vote; hasty pudding aristocracy; and Robert E. Lee, on the inside back cover.