If there was a focal point outside New York City for the cultural phenomenon known as the Harlem Renaissance, it was Anne Spencer’s garden at 1313 Pierce Street in Lynchburg, Virginia. Friends, neighbors, and visitors made the pilgrimage to her remarkable garden, among them George Washington Carver, Martin Luther King Jr, Mary McLeod Bethune, W. E. B. DuBois, Langston Hughes, Georgia Douglas Johnson, Paul Robeson, Gwendolyn Brooks, Maya Angelou, Adam Clayton Powell, and Thurgood Marshall.
According to Keith Clark, “About Anne Spencer,” http://www.english.uiuc.edu/maps/poets/s_z/spencer/about.htm (from The Oxford Companion to Women’s Writing in the United States. Ed. Cathy N. Davidson and Linda Wagner-Martin. New York: Oxford University Press, 1995. Copyright © 1995 by Oxford University Press) “Anne Spencer cultivated a garden that attracted several members of the black artistic community for over half a century…. Her devotion to illuminating the beauty of God’s garden and humankind’s place in it anticipates writers such as Alice Walker, who also sees a cosmic and spiritual relationship between human beings and the earth.”
Spencer was herself a significant contributing writer in the Harlem Renaissance. Composing her poetry in her garden, it was central to her imagery and meaning. She cultivated the garden from 1903 until her death on July 25, 1975, and the legacy lives on, as the garden is maintained by Lynchburg resident Thelma Chow. Anne Spencer’s garden enhanced the creativity of the artists and writers of the Harlem Renaissance and later, providing a respite and a cultural focal point for the black artistic community of the early twentieth century.
Research Briefing No 7: Anne Spencer’s Garden
2012/04/08 by janvoogd
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