Anne Spencer Begins Writing Poetry in Lynchburg, Virginia

Anne Spencer, a librarian in Lynchburg, Virginia, began writing the poetry that would be published in The Crisis and other outlets in the early 1920s. Her garden in Lynchburg became a gathering place for visiting Black intellectuals including James Weldon Johnson, W.E.B. Du Bois, and Langston Hughes. Spencer was a distinctive Harlem Renaissance poet whose work drew on nature and classical themes while addressing race.