Jesse Redmond Fauset

Jesse Fauset was born in Snow Hill, New Jersey, on April 27, 1882. She graduated from Cornell University (B.A., 1905), later earning a master's degree from the University of Pennsylvania (1919). For several years she taught French in an all-black secondary school in Washington, D.C. While there she published articles in The Crisis magazine, the journal of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). Its editor, W.E.B. Du Bois, persuaded her to move to New York City to become the magazine's literary editor. In that capacity, from 1919 to 1926, she discovered or encouraged several writers of the Harlem Renaissance, including Langston Hughes, Countee Cullen, Claude McKay, and Jean Toomer. She also edited and wrote for The Brownies' Book, a short-lived periodical for black children. In 1929 she married Herbert Harris. Following his death in 1958, Fauset lived with her half brother. She died on April 30, 1961, in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. In her own work Fauset portrayed mostly middle-class black characters forced to deal with self-hate as well as racial prejudice. Some critics felt her portrayals were overly idealistic, whereas others noted their subtle sense of underlying frustration. In Fauset's best-known novel, Comedy: American Style (1933), Olivia Carey, the protagonist, is a black woman who longs to be white, while her son and husband take pride in their cultural heritage. Fauset's other novels include There Is Confusion (1924), Plum Bun (1928), and The Chinaberry Tree (1931).

Read full description by Bio. Information taken from Encyclopedia Brittanica 2004 -- Poetry retrieved from The Book of American Negro Poetry. Ed. James Weldon Johnson. New York: Harcourt, Brace & Co., 1922 -- Photo by Carl Van Vetchen...