Born in Greenwood, South Carolina, Anita moved to Pennsylvania at age sixteen, living first in Yeadon with her aunt, then in Philadelphia with her mother, who moved north when Anita was eighteen.

She became one of the few black lesbians in the United States who were living out, speaking out, and writing out in the 1950s and 1960s.

Anita's early writings, published in The Ladder and The Negro Digest, were among the first to identify the author as a black lesbian.