Biographical Note
Anna Jean Snowden was born circa September 3, 1895, to Walter Snowden and Josephine M. Snowden in Lexington, Kentucky. She had one older sister, Lillian Snowden Bazley (1892-1936). She attended Chandler Normal School in Lexington, a historical African American public school devoted to educating future teachers. Snowden and her family spent time in Dayton, Ohio, and New York City after she finished high school. She attended Howard University in Washington, D.C., graduating with a two-year degree in kindergarten education in 1914 and continuing on to receive a bachelor’s degree in education in 1916.
Snowden taught from 1917 to 1919 at the Tuskegee Institute in Alabama. She spent time at Georgia State College in 1919 and spent the summer of 1920 studying at Columbia University. Throughout the 1920s Snowden stayed with her sister in Richmond, Virginia. She may have returned to Dayton, Ohio, in the 1930s but it is unclear where she lived or whether she continued teaching after the 1920s.