For its third annual Jessie Redmon Fauset Day, the Lawnside Historical Society has invited experts on the most prolific novelist of the Harlem Renaissance to have a conversation about her work, life and role in the civil rights struggle. The program will start at noon Saturday, April 22, in the Lawnside Public School, 426 E. Charleston Ave. Admission is $5.
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 A.M.E. Church in 1882.
Dr. Mychel Namphy, assistant professor of English at York College, City University of New York, will join Dr. Cheryl A. Wall of Rutgers University, New Brunswick, in a dialog about Miss Fauset's work and her relationship with W.E.B. DuBois. Dr. Wall teaches African-American and American literature in the English Department. Dr. Namphy has also taught the Harlem Renaissance, African American and Native American literature, English, and Black women writers at Rutgers and Princeton universities and Bronx Community College. He is a graduate of Columbia University who earned his doctorate at Princeton University. Dr. Wall's book, in which she profiles Miss Fauset, Women of the Harlem Renaissance, will be on sale along with her most recent about Black female authors, Worrying the Line.
The Society will be selling Miss Fauset's novels Plum Bun and The Chinaberry Tree as well.
The Sonny Keaton Jazz Q-Tet, led by Lawnside resident Sonny Keaton on organ, will perform music of the Harlem Renaissance period before and after the dialog. Other members of the band are Donald Washington on tenor saxophone, George Perakis on guitar and Wayne Morgan on drums and percussion.
Miss Fauset was born in Snow Hill (the old name for Lawnside) on April 26, 1882, where her father, the Rev. Redmon Fauset was pastor of Mt. Pisgah. She received her education in Philadelphia, a graduate of Girls High School. She is a 1905 graduate of Cornell University and earned a master's degree in French from the University of Pennsylvania. Langston Hughes 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.
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 $2. 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.
For tickets call, 856-546-8850 or 547-8489.
The Lawnside Historical Society, Inc. is a qualified organization of the New Jersey Cultural Trust.
