User:Jadeperry99/Elton Fax

Career
Elton Fax taught art at the Harlem Community Art Center in New York beginning in 1934, and was involved with the Works Project Administration Federal Art Project, a government financial assistance program for artists during the Great Depression. Fax was an illustrator for magazines such as Weird Tales, Astounding Science-Fiction, Complete Cowboy, Real Western, Story Parade, Child Life, and All Sports. In 1942 he began a newspaper comic named Susabelle, and later an illustrated history panel, They'll Never Die, both carried in African-American newspapers. He also created greeting card illustrations for The Links.

Books written and illustrated by Fax include West African Vignettes (1960), Contemporary Black Leaders (1970), Seventeen Black Artists (1972), Garvey (1972, a biography of Marcus Garvey), Through Black Eyes: Journeys of a Black Artist to East Africa and Russia (1974), Black Artists of the New Generation (1977), and Hashar (1980). In addition, Fax illustrated books by children's authors such as Georgene Faulkner and Verna Aardema, and created dust jacket art for various publishers, as well as a literacy pamphlet for the Pan American Union. Fax also worked for several comic companies in the 1940s as a cartoonist, including Continental Features Syndicate, a group that spread comic books throughout black communities. Some other companies he worked for as a cartoonist included Funnies Inc., Quality Comics, and Novelty Comics.

Fax toured Latin America in 1955, and was a lecturer in East Africa in 1963, both times sponsored by the US State Department. After living in Mexico and traveling through Bolivia, Argentina, and Uruguay, Fax wrote in his article, "It's Been a Beautiful but Rugged Journey," about feeling concerned after the United States Embassy asked him if he had seen any communist activity. Also in 1963, he toured Nigeria with jazz musician Randy Weston, sponsored by the American Society of African Culture. He was one of the fourteen representatives of the American Society for African Culture at an international writers' meeting in Rome in 1959, and he reported from the meeting for the New York Age. After his visit to Rome, he toured Africa, visiting countries such as Nigeria, Sudan, Egypt, and Ethiopia. These trips were the basis of his sketches for his first book, West African Vignettes. Fax also attended the Soviet Writers' Union meetings in 1971 and 1973, and the Bulgarian Writers' Conference in 1977. From 1949 to 1956, he was a "chalk talk artist" with the New York Times Children's Book Program, meaning that as he presented stories, he also spontaneously illustrated them. Sue Bailey Thurman donated works by Elton Fax to the "Heritage Hall" at Livingstone College in 1973.

Fax was a fellow at the MacDowell Colony in 1968. He received a Rockefeller Foundation Research Grant in 1976 to travel to Italy. Other awards included the Coretta Scott King Award from the American Library Association (1972) and the Chancellor's Medal from Syracuse University in 1990.