Anna Belle Rhodes Penn

Anna Belle Rhodes Penn (18 June 1865 – 4 June 1930) was an African American essayist, poet, and educator, who began her studies at Shaw University aged just thirteen. and Sophia Piland Rhodes. The praise Majors describes came from John Mercer Langston, the university's president and the uncle of Langston Hughes, for whom the poet was named. The couple had seven children: Wilhelmina (b. 1890), Irvine Garland Jr. (b. 1892), Georgia (b. 1894), Elizabeth (b. 1896), Louise (b. 1898), Marie (b. 1900), and Anna Belle (b. 1903).

Work

Anna had begun to write essays and poetry while still in school, encouraged by friends and teachers, later becoming noted for her writings. Penn has since been acknowledged as providing valuable assistance to Irvine when preparing his first book: The Afro-American Press and Its Editors (1891). Though Majors wrote in his 1893 work that 'the reading Afro-American must not be surprised if the Madame gives a book to the world of letters in the near future', Both were buried in the Colored American Cemetery, Cincinnati.