"Crystal Bird Fauset"(June 27 1894- March 18 1964)

The first African-American woman to be elected to a state house of representatives.She was born to Benjamin Oliver Bird and Portia E. (Lovett)Bird in Princess Anne, Maryland,but was raised in Boston by her maternal aunt,Lucy Groves.There she attended public schools and was considered an outstanding student. Later in life Crystal maintained that her social and political conscience was shaped by her experiences as a child in Boston.She went on to Teachers College, Columbia University,where she earned a BS degree in 1931.Upon graduation Crystal Bird worked as a social worker and administrator of Negro Affairs for the Young Women's Cristian Association in New York City and Philadelphia. In 1931 she married the author and educator Arthur Huff Fauset.The couple separated soon after their marriage,and he divorced her in 1944. In 1933 she was named executive secretary for the Institute of Race Relations at Swarthmore College.While serving in that position,she became convinced of the necessity of political action for economic change. In 1935 she was appointed an assistant personnel director in the Philadelphia office of the Works Progress Administration (WPA),and in 1936 she became director of black women's activities for the Democratic National Committee.Through that position she established numerous political contacts.In 1938 the leadership of Philadelphia's local Democratic Party organization asked her to run for a seat in the Pennsylvania House of Representatives from the Eighteenth District in Philadelphia and she was accepted.The primary election was hotly contested,but she won the November election, in a largely white district,becoming the first African American woman ever to achieve such a position She remained in the legislature only one year,before resigning in order to accept an appointment in November 1939 to the Pennsylvania WPA as assistant state director of the Education and Recreational Program.Crystal remained in that position until 1941.With the assistance of Eleanor Roosevelt, a close friend,she was appointed special consultant on Negro affairs in the Office of Civilian Defense in Washington, DC.By 1944 Crystal, had become disappointed with the Democratic Party because of its handling of black Americans in the war effort, she was announced her support of Governor Thomas E. Dewey's bid for the Republican presidential nomination.After meeting with Thomas and other Republican leaders,she became an adviser to the Republican National Committee's division on Negro affairs.Crystal held a number of other important posts during her distinguished career.For a time she was chair of the Philadelphia Negro League and served on the board of trustees of Cheney State Teaches College. In 1963 Philadelphia mayor James Tate appointed Crystal to the board of directors of the Small Business Opportunities Corporation.She suffered a heart attack and died in Philadelphia.Crystal believed that wide economic gaps between human beings interfered with human relationships, and she spent most of her life attempting to close those economic gaps to improve the quality of human life.