Anne Spencer is considered one of the most important voices of the Harlem Renaissance literary period, from 1925-1935
“She kept everything she wrote,” said Ann Spencer, widow of Anne Spencer’s son Chauncey, “not because she thought it was all important, but because she just didn’t throw anything away. She used the back stairs of the house as her filing system, and after she died, we could hardly get up them.
“She would even make corrections in books she was reading if she thought something was wrong.”
Such packrats are like gifts from God for historians.
As UVa employees hauled the boxes out to a white college truck, sweating even at 9:30 a.m., Ann Spencer said: “It’s a little sad to see them go, but I understand.”
Her daughter, Shaun Hester, felt the same way.
“It’s bittersweet,” said Hester, who recently moved back from Washington, D.C., to live with her mother in the family home across the street from 1313 Pierce. “I used to enjoy looking through that stuff myself. There’s magazines, stuff written on envelopes, letters, papers from my father.”
Read the complete article in the Lynchburg News and Advance.
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