NAACP Image Award-winning author Victoria Christopher Murray recounts the history of the woman who poet Langston Hughes called the “midwife of the Harlem Renaissance” in a new historical fiction novel titled “Harlem Rhapsody,” based on the life of literary editor Jessie Redmon Fauset.
From 1919 to 1926, Fauset was the first and only literary editor of “The Crisis,” the official magazine of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), which launched in 1910.
Murray, who has sold millions of copies of historical fiction novels such as “The Personal Librarian” about J. P. Morgan’s personal librarian, Belle da Costa Greene, had never heard of Fauset when she first sought to detail a story about a woman from the Harlem Renaissance period that took place roughly a century ago.
“What I say is that Jesse Redmon Fauset found me,” Murray explained in an interview with the Amsterdam News. “I wanted to write about the Harlem Renaissance and she raised her hand and said, ‘I’m here, everybody’s been ignoring me.’ What stood out more to me is that there is a Black woman who started the literary side of the Harlem Renaissance.”
Hughes’s high praise for Fauset was Murray’s introduction to her subject. The author went on to learn about how in Fauset’s post with “The Crisis,” and even her previous position as a teacher at Dunbar High School in Washington, D.C., Fauset published, edited, and mentored the likes of Hughes, Countee Cullen, Jean Toomer, and Nella Larsen before their writing careers took off.
The moment that both solidified the movement that would become known as the Harlem Renaissance and cemented Fauset’s role in it came on March 21, 1924. That night in Harlem, Fauset hosted a launch party for her novel “There Is Confusion,” which is considered the first published novel featuring Black middle-class characters. The event also highlighted many of the authors whom Fauset published in “The Crisis,” and who would come to be most associated with the Harlem Renaissance, providing them an initial in-person introduction to book publishers in attendance.
Murray recalled learning that during that event, writer Alain Locke, “Opportunity” magazine editor Charles Johnson, and NAACP co-founder W.E.B. Dubois proclaimed that “[t]onight begins the New Negro Movement.” That movement would later be called the Harlem Renaissance.
“After her [Fauset’s] book was published, over 40 other books by Black authors were published in the same vein, and every single one of those books was by an author that she had edited, mentored, nurtured, and published,” Murray said. “Once they saw ‘There Is Confusion,’ every publisher now wanted to get their Black author.”
DuBois also played a significant part in Fauset’s life for the well-documented love affair they were rumored to have while DuBois was married. Murray corroborated the rumors with letters from DuBois, and accounts from others who knew both of them. In “Harlem Rhapsody,” Murray imagines conversations between Fauset and DuBois, and interactions with others around them, such as Fauset’s stepmother, Bella Huff. As one of the most significant open secrets of the community at the time, the alleged decade-long affair had ripple effects felt a century later.
“I thought about writing about this book at first without their affair because I didn’t want to write anything salacious,” Murray said. “I wanted to write about who she was and all of the accomplishments she had, but when I tried to write the book without the affair, there were a lot of plot holes.”
For instance, Murray believes Fauset’s move from Washington, D.C., to Harlem, where DuBois also lived, and her assignment as literary editor of “The Crisis” don’t make sense without factoring in the fondness DuBois developed for Fauset after they met in 1914. “The Crisis” never had a literary editor before Fauset or after she left in 1926 to teach at DeWitt Clinton High School in the Bronx, N.Y.
Once Fauset joined the magazine, she transformed “The Crisis” from a publication that mostly featured scholarly articles about criminal justice reform, Black history, and social justice, to one that featured poetry, fiction, and creative essays, and provided a launching point for some of the most significant Harlem Renaissance scribes.
Murray, who has published 30 books to date, spent five weeks out of her three-month research period living in the Harlem neighborhood where Fauset lived, studying every day of that visit at the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture. Since there is no biography of Fauset, Murray relied on century-old articles and letters, and read every issue of “The Crisis” magazine published while Fauset was literary editor. From there, Murray wrote a fictional story meant to entertain, dramatizing Fauset’s relationships with people like DuBois and NAACP board member Mary White Ovington.
“Everything is anchored in history, so I know the scene happened, but what I don’t know is what they said, what they wore, what they ate, what they thought, but I can extrapolate all of that from my research,” Murray explained. “People who wouldn’t normally read biographies — when you’re writing historical fiction, they wind up going down their own rabbit hole and doing their own research.”
Beyond providing entertainment, Murray hopes that “Harlem Rhapsody” introduces readers to a woman who, by depicting Black middle-class characters in novels before many book publishers were comfortable with the idea, paved the way for authors like Murray herself.
“This is the first novel where I’ve had a hard time letting go of the person,” Murray said. “This is the book that I was supposed to write. This is the book that my career was built for, because I got to bring [to readers] a woman so pivotal in not only Black history, but my history. She was as important as my ancestors to me because she opened the first door that allowed me to do what I love.”
“Harlem Rhapsody” is available online and in store via retailers such as Barnes & Noble and Walmart.