Collection of documentaries on Anne Spencer's garden
Content Description
Tape 1 contains Anne Spencer: Echoes from the Garden Tape 2 contains Garden Story "Anne Spencer Garden"
Dates
- undated, c.2008
Creator
- Frischkorn, Rebecca (Person)
Conditions Governing Access
Biographical / Historical
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. Spencer was also known for her gardens and in the cottage, Edankraal, which her husband Edward built for her in the garden behind their home. The name Edankraal combines Edward and Anne and kraal, the Afrikaans word for enclosure or corral.The gardens served as an inspiration and refuge for her writing and to many other writers and artists of the era wo visited her home.
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.
Extent
2 Cassettes (2 VHS tapes)
Language of Materials
English
Physical Characteristics and Technical Requirements
Immediate Source of Acquisition
Condition Description
Creator
- Frischkorn, Rebecca (Person)
- Title
- Guide to the Documentaries of Anne Spencer's garden collection
- Status
- Completed
- Author
- Rose Oliveira, Accessioning Archivist
- Date
- 15 September 2022
- Description rules
- Describing Archives: A Content Standard
- Language of description
- English
- Script of description
- Latin
Repository Details
Part of the Albert and Shirley Small Special Collections Library Repository
Albert and Shirley Small Special Collections Library
P.O. Box 400110
University of Virginia
Charlottesville Virginia 22904-4110 United States