Born April 27, 1882

Camden County, New Jersey

Died April 30, 1961

Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

American editor and novelist

Jessie Redmon Fauset felt strongly that black writers were best qualified to describe the African American experience, and she set out to prove this herself.

Fauset played an important role in the Harlem Renaissance not only through her own writing (including four novels, short stories, poems, essays, and articles) but through her efforts to support the work of other black writers. As literary editor of Crisis—a magazine sponsored by the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP)—she recognized and promoted the talent of such Harlem Renaissance stars as Langston Hughes (1902–1967), Claude McKay (1890–1948), Countee Cullen (1903–1946), and Jean Toomer (1894–1967; see biographical entries on these authors). Fauset's own novels have been criticized as too narrowly focused on the prim, proper world of the black middle class—the environment in...