Anne Spencer

The celebrated Harlem Renaissance poet James Weldon Johnson helped to discover Annie’s talent as a poet and also gave her the pen name of Anne Spencer[citation needed]. Life


Childhood
The only child of Joel Cephus Bannister and Sarah Louise Scales Anne Spencer was born Annie Bethel Bannister in Henry County Virginia on February 6 1882. Her parents separated while Annie was very young and Anne Spencer moved with her mother to West Virginia where Anne Spencer was placed under the care of William T.

James Weldon Johnson and W. Anne was the first Virginian and first African-American to have her poetry included in the Norton Anthology of American Poetry.