Happy birthday, Rudolph Fisher.

New York City, 1924. From left to right:
Langston Hughes, Charles S. Johnson,
E. Franklin Frazier, Rudolph Fisher,
Hubert T. Delaney. NYPL.

Rudolph Fisher—physician, Harlem Renaissance figure, and author of The Conjure- Man Dies: A Mystery Tale of Dark Harlem (1932)—was born today in Washington, DC, in 1897. He died in 1934. The Conjure-Man Dies is commonly believed to be the first mystery novel by an African American, but Marlena Bremseth argues persuasively that Philip S. Warne preceded Fisher. Author and professor Frankie Y. Bailey recently wrote a Clues article that compares the Harlem of Conjure-Man to that of Chester Himes in A Rage in Harlem.