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Anne Spencer

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Poet

The Resume

    (February 6, 1882-July 27, 1975)
    Born in Henry County, Virginia
    Birth name was Anne Bethel Bannister
    Poet, teacher, and civil rights activist
    With her husband, Edward Spencer, revived the NAACP chapter in Lynchburg, Virginia (1918)
    Best-known poem was ‘White Things’
    Poems collected in the posthumously published ‘Time’s Unfading Garden: Anne Spencer’s Life and Poetry’

Why she might be annoying:

    She received no education until she was eleven, and was practically illiterate at that age.
    She did not publish her first poem until she was forty.
    She is considered part of the Harlem Renaissance despite rarely leaving Virginia.
    Despite being a civil rights activist, she dismissed school integration as ‘tokenism.’

Why she might not be annoying:

    She was the valedictorian of her class at Virginia Theological Seminary and College.
    As a teacher and librarian at Paul Laurence Dunbar High School, she brought in her own books to augment the school library’s holdings.
    She was married to Edward Spencer for 63 years.
    Her home became an intellectual salon for guests such as Langston Hughes, James Weldon Johnson, W.E.B. Du Bois, and Martin Luther King, Jr..
    She was the second African American featured in the ‘Norton Anthology of American Poetry.’
    Her house and garden were designated a Virginia State Historic Landmark and a Friends of the Library USA Literary Landmark.

Credit: C. Fishel


Featured in the following Annoying Collections:

Year In Review:

    For 2024, as of last weekly ranking, Out of 1 Votes: 100% Annoying
    In 2023, Out of 3 Votes: 66.67% Annoying
    In 2022, Out of 1 Votes: 0% Annoying
    In 2021, Out of 13 Votes: 76.92% Annoying