fauset attended philadelphia high school for girls. she was the only african-american student to graduate. after high school fauset graduated from cornell university in 1905. she was also the first african-american woman to be honoured by being made a member of the "phi beta kappa" society which encourages talented undergraduate students. in 1912, when she was only 16 years old she started work at the naacp's journal, "the crisis". the naacp is the "national association for the advancement of colored people", an organization that was begun in 1902 to help african-americans, and is now one of the oldest civil rights organizations in america. from 1919 to 1926 fauset was the literary editor of "the crisis". she wrote 77 published works of which 58 were first published in the journal.