The Lawnside Historical Society will celebrate its Seventh Annual Jessie Redmon Fauset Day by expanding its poetry writing competition, Spirit of the Renaissance, for fifth through twelfth graders from Camden County to include Burlington and Gloucester.

The deadline for submissions is April 3. Read and print the rules of the competition. The competition is designed to encourage youth to write original poetry in the vein of the Harlem Renaissance, an intellectually vibrant period for Black America. The theme is "I Know My Soul," taken from a poem by Claude McKay, one of Miss Fauset's contemporaries and friends.

Miss Fauset was literary editor of the NAACP's Crisis magazine for seven years during the 1920s, the height of the Harlem Renaissance. She was a novelist, poet and short story writer like her contemporaries Langston Hughes, Countee Cullen and Zora Neale Hurston. She was born in Lawnside while her father was pastor of Mount Pisgah African Methodist Episcopal Church on April 26, 1882.

Miss Fauset received her education in Philadelphia, a graduate of Girls High School. She was a 1905 graduate of Cornell University and earned a master's degree in French from the University of Pennsylvania.

Langston Hughes, Harlem's poet laureate, called Miss Fauset the mid-wife of the Harlem Renaissance for nurturing him and others by providing an outlet for their voices and published work. She eventually married, returned to high school teaching and died in 1961 in New Jersey.

Here is a list of helpful sites for researching the Harlem Renaissance, Jessie Redmon Fauset and Claude McKay.

For tickets call, 856-546-8850 or send email to lhs@petermotthouse.org. Click here to print an event flier.

Jessie Redmon Fauset Day and the Spirit of the Renaissance Poetry competition are funded in part by the Camden County Cutlural and Heritage Commission through the New Jersey Council for the Arts Local Regrant program/Department of State, a partner agency of the National Endowment for the Arts.

The Lawnside Historical Society operates the Peter Mott House Underground Railroad Museum at 26 Kings Court. The museum is open every Saturday from noon to 3 p.m., admission is $5 for adults, $2 for students. Group tours can be arranged by appointment. The Society, a tax-exempt, membership organization, meets on the second Thursday of each month at the Lawnside Public School.

The Society is a qualified organization of the New Jersey Cultural Trust. It is the recipient of a general operating support grant from the New Jersey Historical Commission.