Anne Spencer died at age 93 in Lynchburg, Virginia, and was buried at Forest Hills Cemetery.
Anne Spencer died on July 27, 1975, at the age of 93, in her beloved home city of Lynchburg, Virginia, the place where she had lived, gardened, and written poetry for over seven decades. She was laid to rest in the family plot at Forest Hills Cemetery in Lynchburg, near the home and garden that had inspired so much of her creative and civic life.
By the time of her death, Spencer had lived through remarkable transformations in American society and culture, from the aftermath of Reconstruction through the Harlem Renaissance, the Great Depression, two world wars, and the Civil Rights Movement, in which she had been personally active as a co-founder of the Lynchburg chapter of the NAACP. Her home at 1313 Pierce Street had long served as a gathering place for prominent Black intellectuals and artists, including Langston Hughes, W.E.B. Du Bois, Thurgood Marshall, and Martin Luther King Jr., who found in her house and famous garden cottage, Edankraal, both hospitality and inspiration.
Her death marked the passing of one of the last living links to the first generation of the Harlem Renaissance's literary flowering, though her true recognition in the American literary canon—including her landmark 1973 Norton Anthology inclusion—had only recently begun to take shape. In the decades following her death, her home was preserved as a historic house museum, and her legacy as poet, librarian, gardener, and civil rights activist continued to grow, cementing her place as one of Virginia's most significant literary figures.