Jessie Redmon Fauset was an African American writer and editor of The Crisis, the NAACP journal, who condemned American racism and European colonialism as interrelated systems of dehumanization, linking Black struggles in the US to the global Négritude and Negrismo movements (EK 4.1.B.2).
Jessie Redmon Fauset was an African American writer and an editor of The Crisis, the official journal of the NAACP. In the CED, she shows up as the go-to example of an African American intellectual who supported the Négritude and Negrismo movements from the United States. Her core argument, the one the exam cares about, is that racism in America and colonialism abroad were not separate problems. She treated them as interrelated means of dehumanizing Black people, both propped up by racial ideologies and global capitalism.
Think of Fauset as the bridge figure of Topic 4.1. Writers like Aimé Césaire in Martinique were attacking colonialism from inside the colonies. Fauset, editing The Crisis in the US, used her platform to publish and amplify those critiques alongside coverage of American racial violence. That editorial choice made a point all by itself: Jim Crow in Mississippi and forced labor in a French colony were two faces of the same system.
Fauset lives in Unit 4: Movements and Debates, Topic 4.1 (The Négritude and Negrismo Movements). She directly supports learning objective AP African American Studies 4.1.B, which asks you to explain why proponents of Négritude and Negrismo critiqued colonialism. EK 4.1.B.2 names her specifically as a writer and activist who condemned racism and colonialism as interrelated means of dehumanization. She also helps with AP African American Studies 4.1.A, because she embodies the connection between the New Negro movement in the US and the diasporic movements it influenced. If a question asks how African Americans participated in global Black freedom struggles in the early twentieth century, Fauset is your evidence.
Keep studying AP® African American Studies Unit 4
Aimé Césaire (Unit 4)
Césaire founded Négritude in Martinique and argued that colonialism never civilized anyone, it exploited them. Fauset is the American counterpart, agreeing with that critique from inside the US and showing the movements were a diaspora-wide conversation, not isolated national ones.
The Crisis (Unit 4)
The Crisis was the NAACP's journal and Fauset's platform. Her decision to run Négritude writers next to reports on American racial violence turned the magazine itself into an argument that domestic racism and overseas colonialism were the same fight.
Critique of global capitalism (Unit 4)
Fauset and other African American supporters of Négritude and Negrismo saw colonial exploitation and American racism as products of global capitalism. Racial ideologies justified coerced labor abroad and segregation at home, and both generated profit. That economic link is exactly what EK 4.1.B.2 wants you to articulate.
Cultural assimilation (Unit 4)
Négritude rejected the colonial demand that Black people assimilate into European culture to be seen as 'civilized.' Fauset's work supports that rejection by exposing the lie underneath it. If colonizers truly civilized people, colonialism wouldn't run on violence and forced labor.
Fauset shows up in multiple-choice questions that test whether you can explain the why behind her thinking, not just identify her. Expect stems like 'African American activists like Jessie Redmon Fauset connected colonialism to which economic system?' (answer: global capitalism) or questions asking why her editorial choices at The Crisis paired Négritude writing with coverage of American racial violence. The move you need to make is always the same. Connect two systems of oppression and explain the shared logic of racial ideology and economic exploitation behind both. No released FRQ has used her name verbatim, but she works as concrete evidence anywhere you're asked to explain diasporic solidarity or African American critiques of colonialism in the early twentieth century.
Both are tied to The Crisis, so it's easy to mix them up. Du Bois founded the journal in 1910 and was its editor-in-chief. Fauset served as an editor under him and is the figure the AP African American Studies CED names in Topic 4.1 for connecting racism and colonialism as interrelated systems. If the question is about Négritude, Negrismo, and the colonialism-capitalism link, the CED's named example is Fauset.
Jessie Redmon Fauset was an African American writer and editor of The Crisis, the NAACP's journal.
She condemned American racism and European colonialism as interrelated means of dehumanizing Black people, which is the exact framing of EK 4.1.B.2.
Fauset connected both racism and colonialism to global capitalism, arguing racial ideologies justified exploitation and coerced labor on both sides of the Atlantic.
She represents African American support for the Négritude and Negrismo movements, showing these movements were linked to the New Negro movement in the US.
On the exam, use Fauset as evidence that early twentieth-century Black intellectuals saw their freedom struggle as global, not just American.
Fauset was an African American writer and editor of The Crisis, the NAACP journal, who argued that American racism and European colonialism were interrelated systems of dehumanization. She appears in Topic 4.1 as the key US-based supporter of the Négritude and Negrismo movements.
No. W.E.B. Du Bois founded The Crisis in 1910. Fauset served as an editor of the journal, where she published critiques of both American racism and European colonialism, including work by Négritude writers.
Césaire was a Négritude founder from Martinique critiquing colonialism from within a French colony, while Fauset was an African American editor supporting those same ideas from the United States. Together they show the AP point that Négritude was a diaspora-wide movement connected to the New Negro movement.
She argued both were powered by the same racial ideologies and by global capitalism. Colonial coerced labor abroad and racial violence at home both dehumanized Black people for profit, so fighting one meant fighting the other.
Yes. She is named in EK 4.1.B.2 of the CED, and multiple-choice questions ask why she connected colonialism to global capitalism and why she published Négritude writers alongside coverage of American racial violence in The Crisis.
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