She served for a year as a state representative in which she introduced nine bills and three amendments on issues ranging from affordable housing projects to fair employment legislation.

[1][3] While attending Columbia University, Bird joined the American Friends Service Committee (AFSC), a Quaker organization, in September 1927.

The AFSC had become interested in improving race relations in the United States and had formed their Interracial Section in 1925, two years before offering Bird a staffing position.

One of the missions of the organization was to foster intercultural exchange as a way to better racial understanding, and the AFSC sponsored Bird as a touring speaker to promote this message.

The majority of Bird's appearances occurred with white audiences in places such as Philadelphia, New York City, Boston, Baltimore, Washington, and Indiana.

She then helped establish the Institute of Race Relations at Swarthmore College in 1933, for which she was the joint executive secretary of the summer seminars for two years.

Fauset spoke on her belief that disarmament and peace would be economically beneficial to African Americans and the nation, especially during that time of the Great Depression.

During her time with Philadelphia's WPA, Fauset ended a racial quota system for sewing jobs which helped increase African American women's access to employment.

[7] In January 1940, she resigned from the state legislature in order to begin a new position as assistant director of the education and recreation program of the WPA, as well as the organization's race relations advisor in Pennsylvania.

[3] In October 1941, Fauset was appointed to the newly formed Race Relations Division of the Office of Civilian Defense (OCD), one of the World War II agencies of the Roosevelt administration.

The agency was tasked with coordinating and monitoring the volunteer defense activities of American men, women, and children on the home front.

By the summer of 1942, there were about 10 million volunteers and OCD events included air-raid drills, salvage drives, and planting Victory Gardens.

She addressed complaints of racial discrimination among black servicemen such as their exclusion from United Service Organizations canteens and combat missions, and she spoke out against segregation in the U.S. military.

[7][8][9] By some historical accounts, Fauset is considered a member of President Roosevelt's "Black Cabinet" that promoted civil rights for African Americans.

She befriended independence leaders and future presidents Kwame Nkrumah of Ghana and Nnamdi Azikiwe of Nigeria, as well as Ralph Bunche, an African American diplomat and 1950 Nobel Peace Prize winner.

Beginning in 1955, Fauset lobbied for the opening of an Africa House in New York, a proposed forum for black and white Americans to learn about the continent by interacting with Africans.

The memorial reads "The first Black woman elected to a state legislature in the U.S., Fauset, who lived here, won her seat in the Pennsylvania House of Representatives, 1938.