Arthur Fauset

Arthur Huff Fauset, an anthropologist, folklorist, educator, activist, and poet, was born in Flemington, New Jersey, on January 20, 1899. He was the second of three children born to Redmon Fauset, an African Methodist Episcopal Church minister who died when Fauset was four, and Bella (née Huff), who was white and of Jewish descent. Jessie Redmon Fauset was one of two elder sisters from his father’s previous marriage. Fauset graduated from Boys Central High School in Philadelphia (now, Central High School) in 1916 and the Philadelphia School of Pedagogy, a teacher-training program at Central for matriculated students, in 1918. Around this time, the scholar Alain Locke, a friend of the family’s, became a significant influence in Fauset’s life, serving as his mentor. Fauset would later become Locke’s literary executor. He earned his AB from the University of Pennsylvania in 1921, an MA in anthropology in 1923, and a PhD in 1942. 

Fauset began to publish short stories and articles on African American folklore in the 1920s. He published the short fiction work “A Tale of the North Carolina Woods” in the January 1922 issue of The Crisis. In 1926, he won two awards sponsored by Opportunity magazine for best short story and best essay, respectively. In the spring of the following year, Fauset cofounded and edited Black Opals—a periodical dedicated to publishing literary work by African American Philadelphians—with Nellie Rathbone Bright. The magazine was short-lived, however, and released its final issue on Christmas in 1928. In the 1930s, author Benjamin Brawley asked Fauset to write one book in an intended series of biographies about significant figures in African American history. Fauset completed Sojourner Truth: God’s Faithful Pilgrim (University of North Carolina Press, 1938), but Brawley’s intended series never came to fruition. Fauset later produced three books specifically for children, though he is best known for his anthropological writing, particularly Black Gods of the Metropolis: Negro Religious Cults of the Urban North (University of Pennsylvania Press, 1944), a study of African American churches in Philadelphia. 

Fauset spent much of his life dedicated to education and civil rights activism. After graduating from the school of pedagogy, he took a job as an elementary school teacher. He later helped found the Philadelphia branch of the American Federation of Teachers and served as one of its vice presidents. He also served with the labor activist A. Philip Randolph as an administrator of the National Negro Congress and founded the local branch of the United People’s Action Committee which organized, in collaboration with the NAACP, a strike against the Philadelphia Rapid Transit Company for its refusal to hire Black transit workers. The strike was a success, resulting in the hiring of Black trolley operators in the 1940s. 

In 1942, Fauset enlisted in the U.S. Army and qualified to become an officer but was refused due to accusations of political radicalism. He returned to Philadelphia and served as the principal of Douglass Singerly Elementary School. He retired from the Philadelphia public school system in 1946 and focused on writing. He later published the history textbook America: Red, White, Black, Yellow (Franklin Publishing and Supply Co., 1969), cowritten with Rathbone Bright. Soon thereafter, after failing to organize his own school for Spanish-speaking students, he took a job teaching English to foreign-language students at the Spanish-American Institute. 

Fauset died on September 2, 1983.