Arthur Fauset

Arthur Huff Fauset (January 20, 1899 – September 2, 1983)[1] was an American civil rights activist, anthropologist, folklorist, and educator.

As a person of known mixed race, Arthur Fauset never identified fully with either of his parents' ethnic groups as a child or adult.

People of color had fewer opportunities in academia, but some men completed advanced degrees and obtained some college positions.

[6] In 1935, Arthur Fauset became chairman of the Philadelphia Sponsoring Committee for the newly formed National Negro Congress (NNC), an organization committed to political and economic empowerment.

For the next three years in Philadelphia, he helped lead African American efforts for better jobs, housing, state anti-lynching legislation, and enforcement of Pennsylvania's Equal Rights Bill of 1935.

[6] Arthur Huff Fauset was very interested in folklore and conducted fieldwork in the South, the Caribbean, and Nova Scotia to learn these tales.

During the time of the Harlem Renaissance, he brought awareness to African American folklore through tales, songs, conundrums, and jokes.

His first piece appeared in The Crisis while he was a college student at the University of Pennsylvania with his short story "The Tale Of The North Carolina Woods" in January 1922.

[10] He aimed to cultivate and revive African American culture through these tales and reestablish a sense of pride that had long been abandoned.

[8] It was as though each group only had small pieces of a larger puzzle and needed help in organizing and bringing all of their stories together to get a better sense of their whole culture.

This debunked the stereotype that all Negroes enjoyed and were drawn to warmer climates, giving them a more authentic identity at a time when they were being portrayed as minstrels in the United States.

[14] She also published poetry in the magazine, as did Mae V. Cowdery; both their pieces were praised by Countee Cullen, the new literary editor of Opportunity.

Fauset published two of Lewis' traditional stories, as well as his account of hunting in Africa in a 1927 issue of the Journal of American Folklore.

With her support, he published his Ph.D. dissertation on Negro cults of Philadelphia,[19] New York City and Chicago, as Black Gods of the Metropolis (1944).