As Black History Month begins, Western New Mexico University recognizes the work of one of its distinguished alums, Anita Scott Coleman (1890-1960).
Coleman, who was born in Guaymas, Mexico, grew up on a ranch outside Silver City. Her father came west from Florida as a Buffalo Soldier, a term given to Black men who enlisted to fight Native Americans after the Civil War.
Coleman graduated from what was then known as New Mexico Normal School in 1909. She and a classmate were the first African Americans to graduate from the school.
Even as a student, Coleman’s literary talent was recognized by her peers. In “The Normalite,” the school newspaper which at that time also served as a de facto yearbook, the editors included a short, tongue-in-cheek poem about each of the graduates. The poem about Coleman reads, “Annie, so good in the literature class / Found out in geometry, it was hard to pass.”
Following a short career as a teacher, Coleman went on to publish short stories, poetry and essays as part of the artistic and social movement now known as the Harlem Renaissance. Beginning in the 1920s, her fiction and essays won prizes offered by distinguished African American magazines such as “The Crisis,” a journal published by the NAACP and edited by the renowned sociologist, author and civil rights activist W. E. B. Du Bois.
Like other writers of the Harlem Renaissance, Coleman is concerned with themes such as employment discrimination, racial passing and racial violence in her writing. She also emphasizes the role of family and community in African American culture.
While Coleman moved to Los Angeles with her husband and children in the 1920s, her ties to New Mexico are evident in her essay “Arizona and New Mexico—The Land of Esperanza.” In this essay, originally published in the magazine “Messenger” in 1926, Coleman extols the opportunities the American southwest offers to Black people—opportunities that are not available in other states.
By the 1930s, the African American periodicals that published Coleman’s short stories and essays were starting to disappear, in part due to the Great Depression. However, after a period of not publishing, Coleman was able to release a collection of poems, “Reason for Singing,” in 1948. Her final work, a children’s book titled “The Singing Bells” (1961), was published posthumously.
Coleman’s writing was highly lauded by her peers during her lifetime, but she remained modest about the work of writing. “Writing is simply transferring to paper all your thoughts and impressions of things coming under observation,” she wrote in a letter to her son Spencer. “You just want to imagine that is something hard to do. It is not hard at all.”