Anne Romaine was a Southern folksinger, author, activist, and historian. Born Dorothy Anne Cooke in 1942 in Atlanta, Georgia, she grew up in North Carolina and attended Queen's College in Charlotte. Following time spent in Mexico on mission work, she returned to the United States and earned her masters degree in history from the University of Virginia. It was here she met civil rights activist Howard Romaine, whom she married in 1965. The couple relocated to Atlanta and had one daughter together, Rita Marie. Romaine later worked at the Alex Haley House in Henning, Tenn. During this time she met Haley and began working on his biography. Additionally she served as cofounder, along with Bernice Johnson Reagon, of the Southern Folk Cultural Revival Project. Romaine died in 1995 after complications with a ruptured appendix.