Crystal Bird Fauset

In 1927, the American Friends Service Committee started to use a young, educated, black woman as a national speaker on racial issues. Crystal Bird Fauset was beginning on a journey that none had traveled before. It was a daunting task and full of apprehension.

About her experiences Miss Fauset wrote: "I went to the Conference at Swarthmore, but as I reached there a little late, I sat behind a curtain waiting my turn to talk, realizing the whole white audience was on the other side of the curtain. When it was time for me to meet the group, I stepped out and lifted the curtain that had separated that group from me, and as I did so I knew in reality that what I am to do this year is to lift the curtain that separates the white people and the colored people, to lift the curtain of misunderstanding that is so dividing us."

Ten years later, Crystal Bird Fauset became the first African American woman to be elected as a state legislator in America. She represented Philadelphia's 13th District. Later, she worked closely on race relations with Franklin D. Roosevelt, Eleanor Roosevelt and New York's Fiorello LaGuardia.

If you go to her home at 5402 Vine Street, Philadelphia, you will find a plaque which 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. She later served as a Civil Defense race relations advisor under Franklin D. Roosevelt."

Crystal Bird Fauset -- one of the treasures that makes the Keystone state so rich.