Elton Fax

Elton Clay Fax (October 9, 1909 – May 13, 1993) was an American illustrator, cartoonist, and author.

Elton Clay Fax was born in 1909, in Baltimore, Maryland, the son of Mark Oakland Fax and Willie Estelle Fax. His father was a stevedore at the Baltimore Railroad Depot; his mother was a seamstress. Elton Fax graduated from Frederick Douglass High School in 1926, where he was classmates with Cab Calloway. Fax attended Claflin College in Orangeburg, South Carolina, but transferred to Syracuse University, where he earned a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in 1931. Soon after college he was featured in a solo art show at the offices of the Baltimore Afro-American newspaper.

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. 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 included such titles as 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.

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