Black Gods of the Metropolis by Arthur Huff Fauset

When Benjamin Bird died in 1897, his wife succeeded him as principal and served until her death in 1900. Her father headed the Princess Anne Academy, a school for African Americans, which later became part of the University of Maryland. She was born on June 27, 1893, the youngest of nine children, to Benjamin and Portia Bird. It’s likely that Fauset’s philosophy was greatly influenced by her parents, both of whom were educators. This may explain, in part, why walls and barriers have never existed for me and why l have always thought in terms of people rather than race.” The children always received me as one of them. “I was born in Maryland but grew up in Boston,” she once told a journalist, “being educated with white school there. That she did might be attributed in part to her upbringing, which took place in a liberal, middle-class environment in which gender and racial borders were rarely encountered.

It is also part of the saga of how African Americans’ pan-Africanist dreams were finally realized with African independence.Īlthough Crystal Bird Fauset contributed indirectly to both causes, she was strictly neither a pan-Africanist nor a feminist. Her story suggests why some African Americans switched allegiance from the Democratic to the Republican Party. Not only was she the Commonwealth’s first black female legislator but the first in the nation. Fauset feels her greatness – in the sweep of her very alert glance, in the charm of her ready smile, in the warm sincerity of her hand clasp, and in her voice – like crisp staccato music, mellowed.”Īttracted by her magnetism, a writer for the Chicago Defender, a black newspaper, extolled the character of Crystal Bird Fauset (1893-1965), the first black woman elected, in 1938, to the General Assembly of Pennsylvania. It dwells within her, emanates from her, and yet, is very subtly hidden.

Black Gods of the Metropolis by Arthur Huff Fauset