Crystal Bird Fauset, born June 27, 1893 in Princess Anne, Maryland, was the first female African American to elected as state legislator in the US. She was elected to the Pennsylvania House of Representatives in 1938, based in Philadelphia, receiving 7000 votes in an area 66% white at the time.
She received her BS in education from Teachers College, Columbia University in 1931. She helped establish the Institute of Race Relations at Swarthmore College in 1933. In 1935, she became assistant to the director of Philadelphia's Works Progress Administration, and ended a racial quota system for sewing jobs which helped increase black women's access to employment.
Fauset resigned from the state legislature to begin a new position as the assistant director of the education and recreation of the WPA, as well as its race relations advisor in Pennsylvania.
She passed away in March 1965.
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