Dates: April 27, 1882 – April 30, 1961
Occupation: writer
Jessie Redmon Fauset was born in Fredericksville, New Jersey. Her father was a minister and her mother died when she was a child. In 1905, Fauset graduated from Cornell University, and began working as a teacher in Washington, D.C. In 1919, she received her master’s from the University of Pennsylvania.
Fauset soon moved to New York City to work as the editor for the NAACP’s The Crisis magazine. She published works written by Harlem Renaissance writers Countee Cullen, Jean Toomer, Langston Hughes, and Claude McKay. She also edited the children’s periodical, The Brownies’. In 1926, she left The Crisis and began teaching in New York City schools.
During Fauset’s high point in her writing career, she wrote four novels: There is Confusion (1924), Plum Bun: A Novel Without a Moral (1928), The Chinaberry Tree: A Novel of American Life (1931), and her last and most well known, Comedy American Style (1933). All of her novels dealt with racial issues such as passing, interracial relationships, and the color line.
