The Story of Jessie Redmon Fauset

The Story of Jessie Redmon Fauset Jessie Redmon Fauset was born the seventh child of Annie Seamon Fauset and Redmon Fauset, a minister in the African Methodist Episcopal church. Jessie Fauset graduated from the High School for Girls in Philadelphia, the only African American student there. She applied to Bryn Mawr, but that school instead of admitting her helped her to enroll at Cornell University, where she may have been the first black woman student. She graduated from Cornell in 1905, with a Phi Beta Kappa honor. Early Career She taught Latin and French for one year at Douglass High School in Baltimore and then taught, until 1919, in Washington, DC, at what became, after 1916, Dunbar High School. While teaching, she earned her M.A. in French from the University of Pennsylvania.  She also began to contribute writings to Crisis, the magazine of the NAACP. She later received a degree from the Sorbonne. Literary Editor of the Crisis Fauset served as literary editor of the  Crisis from 1919 to 1926. For this job, she moved to New York City. She worked with W.E.B. DuBois, both at the magazine and in his work with the Pan African Movement. She also traveled and lectured extensively, including overseas, during her tenure with the  Crisis.  Her apartment in Harlem, where she lived with her sister, became a gathering place for the circle of intellectuals and artists associated with Crisis. Jessie Fauset wrote many of the articles, stories, and poems in the  Crisis  herself, and also promoted such writers as Langston Hughes, Countee Cullen, Claude McKay, and Jean Toomer. Her role in discovering, promoting, and giving a platform to African American writers helped to create an authentic black voice in American literature. From 1920 to 1921, Fauset published  The Brownies Book, a periodical for African American children. Her 1925 essay, â€Å"The Gift of Laughter,† is a classic literary piece, analyzing how American drama used black characters in roles as comics. Writing Novels She and other women writers were inspired to publish novels about experiences like their own when a white male novelist, T.S. Stribling, published Birthright in 1922, a fictional account of an educated mixed-race woman. Jessie Faucet published four novels, the most of any writer during the Harlem Renaissance:  There Is Confusion  (1924),  Plum Bun  (1929),  The Chinaberry Tree  (1931), and  Comedy: American Style  (1933).  Each of these focuses on black professionals and their families, facing American racism and living their rather non-stereotypical lives. After theCrisis When she left the  Crisis in 1926, Jessie Fauset attempted to find another position in publishing but found that racial prejudice was too great a barrier. She taught French in New York City, at DeWitt Clinton High School from 1927 to 1944, continuing to write and publish her novels. In 1929, Jessie Fauset married an insurance broker and World War I veteran, Herbert Harris. They lived with Fausets sister in Harlem until 1936 and moved to New Jersey in the 1940s. In 1949, she briefly served as a visiting professor at Hampton Institute and taught for a short time at Tuskegee Institute. After Harris died in 1958, Jessie Fauset moved to her half-brothers home in Philadelphia where she died in 1961. Literary Legacy Jessie Redmon Fausets writings were revived and republished in the 1960s and 1970s, though some preferred writings about African Americans in poverty rather than Fauset’s depictions of an elite.  By the 1980s and 1990s, feminists had refocused attention on Fauset’s writings. A 1945 painting of Jessie Redmon Fauset, painted by Laura Wheeler Waring, hangs in the National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC. Background, Family: Mother: Annie Seamon Fauset Father: Redmon Fauset Siblings: six older siblings Education: High School for Girls in PhiladelphiaCornell UniversityUniversity of Pennsylvania (French)Sorbonne in Paris Marriage, Children: Husband: Herbert Harris (married 1929; insurance broker)

6 Tips for Negotiating the Salary You Want

6 Tips for Negotiating the Salary You Want You’ve got a job offer. Mini-wave in celebration of you! Except don’t write your â€Å"I quit† email to your current boss just yet. There’s still another step before your new job is official: the salary negotiation. In your offer letter (or email, or phone call), there was likely a salary amount in there somewhere. Remember what we usually tell you about the interview process? That you should hold off on discussing money and benefits until later in the process? Well, my friend, that time is now. Here are some tips you can use to maximize that process, and try to improve upon an initial offer.1. Be realistic.Know the market rate for your position. If you didn’t do this before your interview, do it now (thanks, Google!). You can check sites like Payscale.com and Salary.com to see what information is out there for people in your new position, at your new company, and/or at other companies. This will help you form a baseline of what you can reasonably e xpect. You can try for higher, but if you do that, make sure it’s on the same scale. Sure, you can reach for the stars, but if you demand $500K and a signing bonus Ferrari for a job that averages $60K and may offer an Uber discount, well†¦you will be laughed at (at best), or have your offer rescinded (at worst).2. It’s okay to haggle†¦These days, employers expect there to be a bit of negotiation. Sure, some people are so thankful for the job offer that they sign on the dotted line, no questions asked. However, it’s also common for employees to try for a higher salary. It’s not personal; the employer understands that you’re merely trying to get the best possible outcome for yourself. Once you receive the initial offer, respond graciously with a thank you, and make sure you’re clear that you’d like some time to consider your pay and benefits.3†¦but be nice.This is a dialogue with your new employer, not an adversary. You w ant the tone to be as pleasant and mutually beneficial as possible because soon you will have a personnel file with them. Be polite in all of your communication with them- and don’t let them forget how high a priority you put on being a good fit with their team.4. Don’t forget benefits.Salary may be the most important part of a new job offer/acceptance, but it’s not the only important thing. Take a good look at the benefits package that comes along with the salary. It can be an important fallback negotiation if they really won’t wiggle much on the salary itself. Can you get additional vacation/personal days? Can you add flexible work-from-home time? The negotiation should be considered a package negotiation, with less tangible benefits included in the bottom line as well.5. Have your talking points ready to go.Salary negotiation may follow quickly after the job offer. Once it starts, you don’t want to drag your feet too much. You should have all of your information ready to go so that you can keep the back-and-forth going over the next few days.Chances are, you’re like the rest of us and not an elite athlete whose contract saga can play out for months at a time with the team’s front office. It’s in your interest- and the company’s- to resolve this as quickly as possible to get you started in your new role. To help keep things moving, make sure you have your selling points (Experience! Market rates for this position! Millions of dollars in sales for your last company!) all lined up in your head (or even better, in your notebook) so that you can respond quickly and effectively.6. Know when to fold ‘em.There may be a point in the negotiation where the offered salary just won’t work for you, and the company is no longer willing to go higher. You should know ahead of time what your â€Å"no go† point is, and decide whether you still want to move forward with the job at that less-than -ideal offer. If you don’t, then it’s okay to walk away from the offer and go back into the job search process. If you decide to go ahead and accept, at least you know that you’ve done everything you can do to scoop up any money left on the table.Throughout the process, even if you’re not getting the ideal salary you have in your head, don’t get discouraged. You’ll have opportunities later to negotiate for raises. In the meantime, go out there, be confident, and grab those bucks!