= Zora_Neale_Hurston =

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= Zora_Neale_Hurston =
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Introduction
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Zora Neale Hurston (January 7, 1891 - January 28, 1960) was an
American writer, anthropologist, folklorist, and documentary
filmmaker. She portrayed racial struggles in the early-20th-century
American South and published research on Hoodoo and Caribbean Vodou.
The most popular of her four novels is 'Their Eyes Were Watching God',
published in 1937. She also wrote more than 50 short stories, plays,
an autobiography, ethnographies, and many essays.

Hurston was born in Notasulga, Alabama, and moved with her family to
Eatonville, Florida, in 1894. She later used Eatonville as the setting
for many of her stories.
In her early career, Hurston conducted anthropological and
ethnographic research as a scholar at Barnard College and Columbia
University. She had an interest in African-American and Caribbean
folklore, and how these contributed to the community's identity.

She also wrote about contemporary issues in the black community and
became a central figure of the Harlem Renaissance. Her short satires,
drawing from the African-American experience and racial division, were
published in anthologies such as 'The New Negro' and 'Fire!!' After
moving back to Florida, Hurston wrote and published her literary
anthology on African-American folklore in North Florida, 'Mules and
Men' (1935), and her first three novels: 'Jonah's Gourd Vine' (1934);
'Their Eyes Were Watching God' (1937); and 'Moses, Man of the
Mountain' (1939). Also published during this time was 'Tell My Horse:
Voodoo and Life in Haiti and Jamaica' (1938), documenting her research
on rituals in Jamaica and Haiti.

Hurston's works concerned both the African-American experience and her
struggles as an African-American woman. Her novels went relatively
unrecognized by the literary world for decades. In 1975, fifteen years
after Hurston's death, interest in her work was revived after author
Alice Walker published an article, "In Search of Zora Neale Hurston"
(later retitled "Looking for Zora"), in 'Ms.' magazine.

In 2001, Hurston's manuscript 'Every Tongue Got to Confess', a
collection of folktales gathered in the 1920s, was published after
being discovered in the Smithsonian archives. Her nonfiction book
'Barracoon: The Story of the Last "Black Cargo"' (2018), about the
life of Cudjoe Lewis (Kossola), one of the last survivors of slaves
brought illegally to the US in 1860, was also published posthumously.

Early life
======================================================================
Zora Neale Hurston was born in 1891, the fifth of eight children of
John Hurston and Lucy Ann Hurston ('née' Potts). All four of her
grandparents had been born into slavery. Her father was a Baptist
preacher and sharecropper, who later became a carpenter, and her
mother was a school teacher. She was born in Notasulga, Alabama, on
January 7, 1891. This was her father's hometown and her paternal
grandfather was the preacher of a Baptist church.

When she was three, her family moved to Eatonville, Florida. In 1887,
it was one of the first all-black towns incorporated in the United
States. Hurston said that Eatonville was "home" to her, as she was so
young when she moved there. Sometimes she claimed it as her
birthplace. A few years later in 1897, her father was elected as mayor
of the town. In 1902 he was called to serve as minister of its largest
church, Macedonia Missionary Baptist.

In 1901, some northern school teachers visited Eatonville and gave
Hurston several books that opened her mind to literature. She later
described this personal literary awakening as a kind of "birth".

As an adult, Hurston often used Eatonville as a setting in her
stories--it was a place where African Americans could live as they
desired, independent of white society. Hurston grew up in Eatonville
and described the experience in her 1928 essay, "How It Feels To Be
Colored Me". Eatonville now holds an annual "Zora! Festival" in her
honor.

Hurston's mother died in 1904. Her father married Mattie Moge in 1905.
This was considered scandalous, as it was rumored that he had had
sexual relations with Moge before his first wife's death. Hurston's
father and stepmother sent her to a Baptist boarding school in
Jacksonville, Florida, but she was dismissed after her parents stopped
paying her tuition.

Pre-college
======================================================================
In 1916, Hurston was employed as a maid by the lead singer of a
touring Gilbert & Sullivan theatrical company.

In 1917, she resumed her formal education by attending night school at
Morgan Academy, now known as Morgan State University, a historically
black college in Baltimore, Maryland. At this time, to qualify for a
free high-school education, the 26-year-old Hurston began claiming
1901 as her year of birth. She graduated from the high school in 1918.

College and graduate studies
======================================================================
In college, Hurston learned how to view life through an
anthropological lens apart from Eatonville. One of her main goals was
to show similarities between ethnicities. In 1918, Hurston began her
studies at Howard University, a historically black college in
Washington, DC. She was a member of the Zeta Phi Beta sorority,
founded by and for black women. She was also the first in her family
to attend college, meaning that she was a first-generation college
student. While at Howard, Hurston co-founded 'The Hilltop', the
university's student newspaper. She took courses in Spanish, English,
Greek, and public speaking, and earned an associate degree in 1920. In
1921, she wrote a short story, "John Redding Goes to Sea", that
qualified her to become a member of Alain Locke's literary club, The
Stylus.

Before leaving Howard in 1924, Hurston helped publish the inaugural
issue of the school newspaper. She also joined the Howard literary
club, where she published her first two short stories. Despite this
success, Hurston paid for school by working as a manicurist in the
evenings

In 1925 Hurston was offered a scholarship by Barnard trustee Annie
Nathan Meyer to Barnard College of Columbia University. She was the
sole Black student in this women's college.

Hurston assisted Meyer in crafting the play 'Black Souls'; which is
considered one of the first "lynching dramas" written by a white
woman. She conducted ethnographic research with anthropologist Franz
Boas of Columbia University and later studied with him as a graduate
student. She also worked with Ruth Benedict and fellow anthropology
student Margaret Mead. Hurston received her B.A. in anthropology in
1928.

Alain Locke recommended Hurston to Charlotte Osgood Mason, a
philanthropist and literary patron who had supported Locke and other
African-American authors, such as Langston Hughes; however, she also
tried to direct their work. Mason became interested in Hurston's work
and supported her travel in the South for research from 1927 to 1932
with a stipend of $200 per month. In return, she wanted Hurston to
give her all the material she collected about Negro music, folklore,
literature, hoodoo, and other forms of culture. Hurston's 1927-1932
travel in the South was also backed by the "Association for the Study
of Negro Life" (nowadays known as the "Association for the Study of
African American Life and History") and the "American Folklore
Society", which collectively granted her with up to $1,400.

At the same time, Hurston needed to satisfy Boas as her academic
adviser. Boas was a cultural relativist who wanted to overturn ideas
about ranking cultures in a hierarchy of values.

After graduating from Barnard, Hurston spent two years as a graduate
student in anthropology, working with Boas at Columbia University.
Living in Harlem in the 1920s, Hurston befriended writers including
Langston Hughes and Countee Cullen. Her apartment, according to some
accounts, was a popular spot for social gatherings. Around this time,
Hurston had a few literary successes, placing in short-story and
playwriting contests in 'Opportunity: A Journal of Negro Life',
published by the National Urban League.

Marriages
======================================================================
In 1927, Hurston married Herbert Sheen, a jazz musician and a former
teacher at Howard. He later went to medical school and became a
physician. Their marriage ended in 1931.

In 1935, Hurston was involved with Percy Punter, a graduate student at
Columbia University. He inspired the character of Tea Cake in 'Their
Eyes Were Watching God'.

In 1939, while Hurston was working for the WPA in Florida, she married
Albert Price. They separated after a few months, but did not divorce
until 1943.

The following year, Hurston married James Howell Pitts of Cleveland.
That marriage, too, lasted less than a year.

Hurston twice lived in a cottage in Eau Gallie, Florida: in 1929 and
again in 1951.

Patronage and support
======================================================================
When foundation grants ended during the Great Depression, Hurston and
her friend Langston Hughes both relied on the patronage of
philanthropist Charlotte Osgood Mason, a white literary patron. During
the 1930s, Hurston was a resident of Westfield, New Jersey, a suburb
of New York, where her friend Hughes was among her neighbors.

Academic appointments
======================================================================
In 1934, Hurston established a school of dramatic arts "based on pure
Negro expression" at Bethune-Cookman College, a historically black
college in Daytona Beach, Florida later to be known as Bethune-Cookman
University. In 1956, Hurston received the Bethune-Cookman College
Award for Education and Human Relations in recognition of her
achievements. The English Department at Bethune-Cookman College
remains dedicated to preserving her cultural legacy.

For the 1939-1940 academic year, Hurston joined the Drama Department
of the North Carolina College for Negroes (now known as North Carolina
Central University) in Durham. At the beginning of her tenure, Hurston
published a new book, 'Moses, Man of the Mountain'. She also separated
from her second husband, Albert Price, at this time, although their
divorce would not be finalized until 1943 (see Marriages section).

During her time in the Durham area, Hurston primarily participated in
a variety of thespian activities, marking her lasting interest in
Black folkloric theater and drama. On October 7, 1939, Hurston
addressed the Carolina Dramatic Association, remarking that "our drama
must be like us or it doesn't exist... I want to build the drama of
North Carolina out of ourselves." She noted that her students were
largely supportive of this endeavor because many of the plays
performed and viewed by them previously were not relatable to their
own experiences and instead prioritized a "highbrow" view of society.

She taught various courses at NCCU, but she also studied informally at
the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill with Pulitzer
Prize-winning playwright Paul Green. She was also mentored by
Frederick H. Koch, another faculty member at UNC and the founder of
the Carolina Playmakers. She initially met both writers at the
inaugural 1934 National Folk Festival in St. Louis, Missouri. She was
persuaded by them to move to North Carolina for the prospect of
collaboration with UNC faculty and students, despite the fact that UNC
was still segregated and did not begin formally admitting Black
students until 1951. Because her formal participation was limited,
Hurston became a "secret student", participating in coursework and
theater groups without enrolling in UNC. 'The Daily Tar Heel', UNC'S
student newspaper, even named Hurston as a student in one such course,
which focused on radio production.

Hurston left NCCU after one year to pursue a new fieldwork project in
South Carolina. It is likely that her departure was partially due to
her poor relationship with NCCU's president, James E. Shepard, to
which she briefly alluded in her 1942 autobiography, 'Dust Tracks on a
Road'. To Shepard, Hurston's attire and lifestyle choices were
inappropriate for an unmarried woman, leading to many disagreements;
her severance was rumored to be "the only thing that [they] could
apparently agree upon."

In 2015, UNC students called for Saunders Hall (named after former Ku
Klux Klan leader William L. Saunders) to be renamed "Hurston Hall" in
recognition of Hurston's contributions to academic life in the
Durham-Chapel Hill area. UNC Trustees controversially voted to name
the building Carolina Hall instead, but it is still known informally
by many students as Hurston Hall. Despite the brief nature of her
residency in North Carolina, Hurston is still honored at a variety of
events in the area, including readings of her work. In 2024, Bree L.
Davis received funding from the Southern Documentary Fund to produce a
podcast documenting Hurston's experiences in the Durham-Chapel Hill
area (forthcoming).

Anthropological and folkloric fieldwork
======================================================================
Hurston traveled extensively in the Caribbean and the American South
and immersed herself in local cultural practices to conduct her
anthropological research. Based on her work in the South, sponsored
from 1928 to 1932 by Charlotte Osgood Mason, a wealthy philanthropist,
Hurston wrote 'Mules and Men' in 1935. She was researching lumber
camps in north Florida and commented on the practice of white men in
power taking black women as concubines, including having them bear
children. This practice later was referred to as "paramour rights",
based on the men's power under racial segregation and related to
practices during slavery times. The book also includes much folklore.
Hurston drew from this material as well in the fictional treatment she
developed for her novels such as 'Jonah's Gourd Vine' (1934).

In 1935, Hurston traveled to Georgia and Florida with Alan Lomax and
Mary Elizabeth Barnicle for research on African-American song
traditions and their relationship to slave and African antecedent
music. She was tasked with selecting the geographic areas and
contacting the research subjects.

In 1936 and 1937, Hurston traveled to Jamaica and Haiti for research,
with support from the Guggenheim Foundation. She drew from this
research for 'Tell My Horse' (1938), a genre-defying book that mixes
anthropology, folklore, and personal narrative.

In 1938 and 1939, Hurston worked for the Federal Writers’ Project
(FWP), part of the Works Progress Administration. Hired for her
experience as a writer and folklorist, she gathered information to add
to Florida's historical and cultural collection. Music makes up a
significant portion of the material she collected for the FWP,
including: “Crow Dance,” a Bahamian-American dance song with West
African roots; the Gullah Geechee song, “Oh, the Buford Boat Done
Come”; and the folk song “John Henry,” performed by Gabriel Brown.

From May 1947 to February 1948, Hurston lived in Honduras, in the
north coastal town of Puerto Cortés. She had some hopes of locating
either Mayan ruins or vestiges of an undiscovered civilization. While
in Puerto Cortés, she wrote much of 'Seraph on the Suwanee', set in
Florida. Hurston expressed interest in the polyethnic nature of the
population in the region (many, such as the Miskito Zambu and
Garifuna, were of mixed African and indigenous ancestry and had
developed creole cultures).
During her last decade, Hurston worked as a freelance writer for
magazines and newspapers. In the fall of 1952, she was contacted by
Sam Nunn, editor of the 'Pittsburgh Courier,' to go to Florida to
cover the murder trial of Ruby McCollum. McCollum was charged with
murdering the white Dr. C. Leroy Adams, who was also a state
politician. McCollum said he had forced her to have sex and bear his
child. Hurston recalled what she had seen of white male sexual
dominance in the lumber camps in North Florida, and discussed it with
Nunn. They both thought the case might be about such "paramour
rights", and wanted to "expose it to a national audience".

Upon reaching Live Oak, Hurston was surprised not only by the gag
order the judge in the trial placed on the defense but by her
inability to get residents in town to talk about the case; both blacks
and whites were silent. She believed that might have been related to
Dr. Adams' alleged involvement in the gambling operation of Ruby's
husband Sam McCollum. Her articles were published by the newspaper
during the trial. Ruby McCollum was convicted by an all-male,
all-white jury, and sentenced to death. Hurston had a special
assignment to write a serialized account, 'The Life Story of Ruby
McCollum', over three months in 1953 in the newspaper. Her part was
ended abruptly when she and Nunn disagreed about her pay, and she
left.

Unable to pay independently to return for the appeal and second trial,
Hurston contacted journalist William Bradford Huie, with whom she had
worked at 'The American Mercury', to try to interest him in the case.
He covered the appeal and second trial, and also developed material
from a background investigation. Hurston shared her material with him
from the first trial, but he acknowledged her only briefly in his
book, 'Ruby McCollum: Woman in the Suwannee Jail' (1956), which became
a bestseller.

Hurston celebrated that

Among other positions, Hurston later worked at the Pan American World
Airways Technical Library at Patrick Air Force Base in 1956. She was
fired in 1957 for being "too well-educated" for her job.

She moved to Fort Pierce, Florida. Taking jobs where she could find
them, Hurston worked occasionally as a substitute teacher. At age 60,
Hurston had to fight "to make ends meet" with the help of public
assistance. At one point she worked as a maid on Miami Beach's Rivo
Alto Island.

Death and legacy
======================================================================
During a period of financial and medical difficulties, Hurston was
forced to enter St. Lucie County Welfare Home, where she had a stroke.
She died of hypertensive heart disease on January 28, 1960, and was
buried at the Garden of Heavenly Rest in Fort Pierce, Florida. Her
remains were in an unmarked grave until 1973.

Novelist Alice Walker and fellow Hurston scholar Charlotte D. Hunt
found an unmarked grave in 1997 in the general area where Hurston had
been buried; they decided to mark it as hers. Walker commissioned a
gray marker inscribed with "ZORA NEALE HURSTON / 'A GENIUS OF THE
SOUTH' / NOVELIST FOLKLORIST / ANTHROPOLOGIST / 1901-1960." The line
"a genius of the south" is from Jean Toomer's poem, "Georgia Dusk",
which appears in his book 'Cane'. Hurston was born in 1891, not 1901.

After Hurston's death, a yardman, who had been told to clean the
house, was burning Hurston's papers and belongings. A law officer and
friend, Patrick DuVal, passing by the house where she had lived,
stopped and put out the fire, thus saving an invaluable collection of
literary documents. For two years, he stored them on his covered porch
until he and a group of Hurston's friends could find an archive to
take the material. The nucleus of this collection was given to the
University of Florida libraries in 1961 by Mrs. Marjorie Silver, a
friend, and neighbor of Hurston. Within the collection is a manuscript
and photograph of Seraph on the Suwanee and an unpublished biography
of Herod the Great. Luckily, she donated some of her manuscripts to
the James Weldon Johnson Collection of Yale University. Other
materials were donated in 1970 and 1971 by Frances Grover, daughter of
E. O. Grover, a Rollins College professor and long-time friend of
Hurston. In 1979, Stetson Kennedy of Jacksonville, who knew Hurston
through his work with the Federal Writers' Project, added additional
papers. (Zora Neale Hurston Papers, University of Florida Smathers
Libraries, August 2008).

Literary career
======================================================================
When Hurston arrived in New York City in 1925, the Harlem Renaissance
was at its zenith, and she soon became one of the writers at its
center. Shortly before she entered Barnard, Hurston's short story
"Spunk" was selected for 'The New Negro', a landmark anthology of
fiction, poetry, and essays focusing on African and African-American
art and literature. In 1926, a group of young black writers including
Hurston, Langston Hughes, and Wallace Thurman, calling themselves the
Niggerati, produced a literary magazine called 'Fire!!' that featured
many of the young artists and writers of the Harlem Renaissance.

In 1927, Hurston traveled to the Deep South to collect
African-American folk tales. She also interviewed Cudjoe Kazzola
Lewis, of Africatown, Alabama, who was the last known survivor of the
enslaved Africans carried aboard 'Clotilda', an illegal slave ship
that had entered the US in 1860, and thus the last known person to
have been transported in the Transatlantic slave trade. The next year
she published the article "Cudjoe's Own Story of the Last African
Slaver" (1928). According to her biographer Robert E. Hemenway, this
piece largely plagiarized the work of Emma Langdon Roche, an Alabama
writer who wrote about Lewis in a 1914 book. Hurston did add new
information about daily life in Lewis' home village of Bantè.

Hurston intended to publish a collection of several hundred folk tales
from her field studies in the South. She wanted to have them be as
close to the original as possible but struggled to balance the
expectations of her academic adviser, Franz Boas, and her patron,
Charlotte Osgood Mason. This manuscript was not published at the time.
A copy was later found at the Smithsonian archives among the papers of
anthropologist William Duncan Strong, a friend of Boas. Hurston's
'Negro Folk-tales from the Gulf States' was published posthumously in
2001 as 'Every Tongue Got to Confess.'

In 1928, Hurston returned to Alabama with additional resources; she
conducted more interviews with Lewis, took photographs of him and
others in the community, and recorded the only known film footage of
him--an African who had been trafficked to the United States through
the slave trade. Based on this material, she wrote a manuscript,
'Barracoon', completing it in 1931. Hemenway described it as "a highly
dramatic, semifictionalized narrative intended for the popular
reader." It has also been described as a "testimonial text", more in
the style of other anthropological studies since the late 20th
century.

After this round of interviews, Hurston's literary patron,
philanthropist Charlotte Osgood Mason, learned of Lewis and began to
send him money for his support. Lewis was also interviewed by
journalists for local and national publications. Hurston's manuscript
'Barracoon' was eventually published posthumously on May 8, 2018.
"Barracoon", or barracks in Spanish, is where captured Africans were
temporarily imprisoned before being shipped abroad.

In 1929, Hurston moved to Eau Gallie, Florida, where she wrote 'Mules
and Men.' It was published in 1935.

1930s
=======
By the mid-1930s, Hurston had published several short stories and the
critically acclaimed 'Mules and Men' (1935), a groundbreaking work of
"literary anthropology" documenting African-American folklore from
timber camps in North Florida. In 1930, she collaborated with Langston
Hughes on 'Mule Bone: A Comedy of Negro Life', a play that they never
staged. Their collaboration caused their friendship to fall apart. The
play was first staged in 1991.

Hurston adapted her anthropological work for the performing arts. Her
folk revue 'The Great Day' featured authentic African song and dance,
and premiered at the John Golden Theatre in New York in January 1932.
Despite positive reviews, it had only one performance. The Broadway
debut left Hurston in $600 worth of debt. No producers wanted to move
forward with a full run of the show.

During the 1930s, Zora Neale Hurston produced two more musical revues,
'From Sun to Sun,' which was a revised adaptation of 'The Great Day,'
and 'Singing Steel.' Hurston had a strong belief that folklore should
be dramatized.

Hurston's first three novels were published in the 1930s: 'Jonah's
Gourd Vine' (1934); 'Their Eyes Were Watching God' (1937), written
during her fieldwork in Haiti and considered her masterwork; and
'Moses, Man of the Mountain' (1939).

In 1937, Hurston was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship to conduct
ethnographic research in Jamaica and Haiti. 'Tell My Horse' (1938)
documents her account of her fieldwork studying spiritual and cultural
rituals in Jamaica and vodoun in Haiti.

1940s and 1950s
=================
In the 1940s, Hurston's work was published in such periodicals as 'The
American Mercury' and 'The Saturday Evening Post'. Her last published
novel, 'Seraph on the Suwanee', notable principally for its focus on
white characters, was published in 1948. It explores images of "white
trash" women. Jackson (2000) argues that Hurston's meditation on
abjection, waste, and the construction of class and gender identities
among poor whites reflects the eugenics discourses of the 1920s.

In 1952, Hurston was assigned by the 'Pittsburgh Courier' to cover the
small-town murder trial of Ruby McCollum, the prosperous black wife of
the local bolita racketeer, who had killed a racist white doctor. She
also contributed to 'Ruby McCollum: Woman in the Suwannee Jail'
(1956), a book by journalist and civil rights advocate William
Bradford Huie.

Posthumous publications
=========================
Hurston's manuscript 'Every Tongue Got to Confess' (2001), a
collection of folktales gathered in the 1920s, was published
posthumously after being discovered in Smithsonian archives.

In 2008, The Library of America selected excerpts from 'Ruby McCollum:
Woman in the Suwannee Jail' (1956), to which Hurston had contributed,
for inclusion in its two-century retrospective of American true crime
writing.

Hurston's nonfiction book 'Barracoon' was published in 2018. A
barracoon is a type of barracks where slaves were imprisoned before
being taken overseas.

In February 2022, a collection of Hurston's non-fiction writings
titled 'You Don't Know Us Negroes and Other Essays', edited and Henry
Louis Gates, Jr, and Genevieve West, was published by HarperCollins.

Spiritual views
=================
In Chapter XV of 'Dust Tracks on a Road', entitled "Religion", Hurston
expressed disbelief in and disdain for both theism and religious
belief. She states:

However, though clearly an atheist who firmly rejected the Baptist
beliefs of her preacher father, she retained an interest in religion
from anthropological and literary standpoints. She investigated
voodoo, going so far as to participate in rituals alongside her
research subjects. In another of her original uncensored notes for her
autobiography shares her admiration for Biblical characters like King
David: "He was a man after God's own heart, and was quite serviceable
in helping God get rid of no-count rascals who were cluttering up the
place."

Public obscurity
==================
Hurston's work slid into obscurity for decades, for both cultural and
political reasons. The use of African-American dialect, as featured in
Hurston's novels, became less popular. Younger writers felt that it
was demeaning to use such dialect, given the racially charged history
of dialect fiction in American literature. Also, Hurston had made
stylistic choices in dialogue influenced by her academic studies.
Thinking like a folklorist, Hurston strove to represent speech
patterns of the period, which she had documented through ethnographic
research.

Several of Hurston's literary contemporaries criticized her use of
dialect, saying that it was a caricature of African-American culture
and was rooted in a post-Civil War, white racist tradition. These
writers, associated with the Harlem Renaissance, criticized Hurston's
later work as not advancing the movement. Richard Wright, in his
review of 'Their Eyes Were Watching God,' said:

But since the late 20th century, there has been a revival of interest
in Hurston. Critics have since praised her skillful use of idiomatic
speech.

During the 1930s and 1940s, when her work was published, the
pre-eminent African-American author was Richard Wright, a former
Communist. Unlike Hurston, Wright wrote in explicitly political terms.
He had become disenchanted with Communism, but he used the struggle of
African Americans for respect and economic advancement as both the
setting and the motivation for his work. Other popular
African-American authors of the time, such as Ralph Ellison, dealt
with the same concerns as Wright albeit in ways more influenced by
Modernism.

Hurston, who at times evinced conservative attitudes, was on the other
side of the disputes over the promise of leftist politics for African
Americans. In 1951, for example, Hurston argued that New Deal economic
support had created a harmful dependency by African Americans on the
government and that this dependency ceded too much power to
politicians.

Despite increasing difficulties, Hurston maintained her independence
and a determined optimism. She wrote in a 1957 letter:

Posthumous recognition
========================
* Zora Neale Hurston's hometown of Eatonville, Florida, celebrates her
life annually in Zora Neale Hurston Festival of the Arts and
Humanities. It is home to the Zora Neale Hurston Museum of Fine Arts,
and a library named for her opened in January 2004.
* The Zora Neale Hurston House in Fort Pierce has been designated as a
National Historic Landmark. The city celebrates Hurston annually
through various events such as 'Hattitudes', birthday parties, and the
several-day event at the end of April known as Zora! Festival.
* Author Alice Walker sought to identify Hurston's unmarked grave in
1973. She installed a grave marker inscribed with "A Genius of the
South".
* Alice Walker published "In Search of Zora Neale Hurston" in the
March 1975 issue of 'Ms.' magazine, reviving interest in Hurston's
work.
* In 1991, 'Mule Bone: A Comedy of Negro Life', a 1930 play by
Langston Hughes and Hurston, was first staged; it was staged in New
York City by the Lincoln Center Theater.
* In 1994, Hurston was inducted into the National Women's Hall of
Fame.
* In 2002, scholar Molefi Kete Asante listed Zora Neale Hurston on his
list of 100 Greatest African Americans.
* Barnard College dedicated its 2003 Virginia C. Gildersleeve
Conference to Hurston. ' 'Jumpin' at the Sun': Reassessing the Life
and Work of Zora Neale Hurston' focused on her work and influence.
Alice Walker's Gildersleeve lecture detailed her work on discovering
and publicizing Hurston's legacy.
* The Zora Neale Hurston Award was established in 2008; it is awarded
to an American Library Association member who has "demonstrated
leadership in promoting African American literature".
* Hurston was inducted as a member of the inaugural class of the New
York Writers Hall of Fame in 2010.
* The novel 'Harlem Mosaics' (2012) by Whit Frazier depicts the
friendship between Langston Hughes and Hurston and tells the story of
how their friendship fell apart during their collaboration on the 1930
play 'Mule Bone: A Comedy of Negro Life'.
* On January 7, 2014, the 123rd anniversary of Hurston's birthday was
commemorated by a Google Doodle.
* She was one of twelve inaugural inductees to the Alabama Writers
Hall of Fame on June 8, 2015.
* An excerpt from her autobiography 'Dust Tracks on a Road' was
recited in the documentary film 'August 28: A Day in the Life of a
People', directed by Ava DuVernay, which debuted at the opening of the
Smithsonian's National Museum of African American History and Culture
in 2016.
* Hurston was honored in a play written and performed by students at
Indian River Charter High School in October 2017, January 2018, and
January 2019. The play was based on letters written between Hurston
and Vero Beach entrepreneur, architect and pioneer Waldo E. Sexton.
* She is the subject of the documentary film 'Zora Neale Hurston:
Claiming A Space' which first aired on 'American Experience' on
January 17, 2023.
* 'Zora's Daughters' is a podcast hosted by Alyssa A.L. James and
Brendane Tynes, who "follow in the legacy of Hurston and other Black
women ethnographers".

Political views
======================================================================
Hurston was a Republican who aligned herself with the politics of the
Old Right and she was also a supporter of Booker T. Washington.
Although she once stated her support for the "complete repeal of All
Jim Crow Laws", she was a contrarian on civil rights activism and she
generally lacked interest in being associated with it. In 1951, she
criticized the New Deal by arguing that it had created a harmful
dependency on the government among African Americans and she also
argued that this dependency ceded too much power to politicians. She
criticized communism in her 1951 essay titled 'Why the Negro won't Buy
Communism' and she also accused communists of exploiting African
Americans for their own personal gain. In her 1938 review of Richard
Wright's short-story collection 'Uncle Tom's Children', she criticized
his communist beliefs and the Communist Party USA for supporting
"state responsibility for everything and individual responsibility for
nothing, not even feeding one's self". Her views on communism, the
New Deal, civil rights, and other topics contrasted with the views of
many of her colleagues during the Harlem Renaissance, such as Langston
Hughes, who was a supporter of the Soviet Union and praised it in
several of his poems during the 1930s.

John McWhorter has called Hurston a conservative, stating that she is
"America's favorite black conservative". David T. Beito and Linda
Royster Beito have argued that she can be characterized as a
libertarian, comparing her to Rose Wilder Lane and Isabel Paterson,
two female libertarian novelists who were her contemporaries and are
known as the "founding mothers" of American libertarianism.
Russell A. Berman of the Hoover Institution described her as a
"heterodox and staunchly libertarian thinker".
The libertarian magazine 'Reason' praised her, claiming: "What Hurston
wanted, in both life and literature, was for everyone, of every race,
for better or worse, to be viewed as an individual first."

In response to black writers who criticized her novel 'Their Eyes Were
Watching God' because it did not explore racial themes, she stated: "I
am not interested in the race problem, but I am interested in the
problems of individuals, white ones and black ones". She criticized
what she described as "Race Pride and Race Consciousness", describing
it as a "thing to be abhorred", stating:

Although her personal quotes show disbelief of religion, Hurston did
not negate spiritual matters as evidenced from her 1942 autobiography
'Dust Tracks on a Road':

In 1952, Hurston supported the presidential campaign of Senator Robert
A. Taft. Like Taft, Hurston was against Franklin D. Roosevelt's New
Deal policies. She also shared his opposition to Roosevelt and
Truman's interventionist foreign policy. In the original draft of her
autobiography, 'Dust Tracks on a Road', Hurston compared the United
States government to a "fence" in stolen goods and a Mafia-like
protection racket. Hurston thought it ironic that the same "people who
claim that it is a noble thing to die for freedom and democracy...
wax frothy if anyone points out the inconsistency of their morals...
We, too, consider machine gun bullets good laxatives for heathens who
get constipated with toxic ideas about a country of their own." She
was scathing about those who sought "freedoms" for those abroad but
denied it to people in their home countries: Roosevelt "can call names
across an ocean" for his Four Freedoms, but he did not have "the
courage to speak even softly at home." When Truman dropped the atomic
bombs on Japan she called him "the Butcher of Asia".

Hurston opposed the Supreme Court ruling in the 'Brown v. Board of
Education' case of 1954. She felt that if separate schools were truly
equal (and she believed that they were rapidly becoming so), educating
black students in physical proximity to white students would not
result in better education. Also, she worried about the demise of
black schools and black teachers as a way to pass on the cultural
tradition to future generations of African Americans. She voiced this
opposition in a letter, "Court Order Can't Make the Races Mix", that
was published in the 'Orlando Sentinel' in August 1955. Hurston had
not reversed her long-time opposition to integration. Rather, she
feared that the Court's ruling could become a precedent for an
all-powerful federal government to undermine individual liberty on a
broad range of issues in the future. Hurston also opposed preferential
treatment for African Americans, saying:

Integration
=============
Hurston appeared to oppose integration based on pride and her sense of
independence. She would not "bow low before the white man", and
claimed "adequate Negro schools" already existed in 1955. Hurston is
described as a "trailblazer for black women's empowerment" because of
her numerous individual achievements and her strong belief that black
women could be "self-made". However, a common criticism of her work is
that the vagueness of her racial politics in her writing, particularly
about black feminism, makes her "a prime candidate for white
intellectual idolatry." Darwin T. Turner, an English professor and
specialist in African-American literature, faulted Hurston in 1971 for
opposing integration and for opposing programs to guarantee blacks the
right to work.

Research and representation
=============================
Some authors criticized Hurston for her sensationalist representation
of voodoo. In 'The Crisis' magazine in 1943, Harold Preece criticized
Hurston for her perpetuation of "Negro primitivism" in order to
advance her own literary career. The 'Journal of Negro History'
complained that her work on voodoo was an indictment of
African-American ignorance and superstition.

Jeffrey Anderson states that Hurston's research methods were
questionable and that she fabricated material for her works on voodoo.
He observed that she admitted to inventing dialogue for her book
'Mules and Men' in a letter to Ruth Benedict and described fabricating
the 'Mules and Men' story of rival voodoo doctors as a child in her
later autobiography. Anderson believes that many of Hurston's other
claims in her voodoo writings are dubious as well.

Several authors have contended that Hurston engaged in significant
plagiarism, and her biographer Robert Hemenway argues that the article
"Cudjo's Own Story of the Last African Slaver" (1927) was
approximately 25% original, the rest being plagiarized from Emma
Langdon Roche's 'Historic Sketches of the Old South'. Hemenway does
not claim that this undermines the validity of her later fieldwork: he
states that Hurston "never plagiarized again; she became a major
folklore collector".

Selected bibliography
======================================================================
* "Journey's End" ('Negro World', 1922), poetry
* "Night" ('Negro World', 1922), poetry
* "Passion" ('Negro World', 1922), poetry
* 'Color Struck' ('Opportunity: A Journal of Negro Life', 1925), play
* Muttsy (Opportunity: A Journal of Negro Life) 1926, short story.
* "Sweat" (1926), short story
* "How It Feels to Be Colored Me" (1928), essay
* "Hoodoo in America" (1931) in 'The Journal of American Folklore'
* "The Gilded Six-Bits" (1933), short story
* 'Jonah's Gourd Vine' (1934), novel
* 'Mules and Men' (1935), non-fiction
* 'Their Eyes Were Watching God' (1937), novel
* 'Tell My Horse' (1938), non-fiction
* 'Moses, Man of the Mountain' (1939), novel
* 'Dust Tracks on a Road' (1942), autobiography
* 'Seraph on the Suwanee' (1948), novel
* "What White Publishers Won't Print" ('Negro Digest', 1950)
* ' I Love Myself When I Am Laughing... and Then Again When I Am
Looking Mean and Impressive: A Zora Neale Hurston Reader' (Alice
Walker, ed.; 1979)
* ' The Sanctified Church' (1981)
* 'Spunk: Selected Stories' (1985)
* 'Mule Bone: A Comedy of Negro Life' (play, with Langston Hughes;
edited with introductions by George Houston Bass and Henry Louis Gates
Jr.; 1991)
* ' The Complete Stories' (introduction by Henry Louis Gates Jr. and
Sieglinde Lemke; 1995)
* ' Novels & Stories: Jonah's Gourd Vine, Their Eyes Were Watching
God, Moses, Man of the Mountain, Seraph on the Suwanee, Selected
Stories' (Cheryl A. Wall, ed.; Library of America, 1995)
* ' Folklore, Memoirs, & Other Writings: Mules and Men, Tell My
Horse, Dust Tracks on a Road, Selected Articles' (Cheryl A. Wall, ed.;
Library of America, 1995)
* ' Every Tongue Got to Confess: Negro Folk-tales from the Gulf
States' (2001)
* ' Zora Neale Hurston: A Life in Letters', collected and edited by
Carla Kaplan (2003)
* 'Collected Plays' (2008)
* 'Barracoon: The Story of the Last "Black Cargo"' (2018)
* 'Hitting a Straight Lick with a Crooked Stick: Stories from the
Harlem Renaissance' (2020)
* 'You Don't Know Us Negroes and Other Essays' (2022)

* 'The Life of Herod the Great: A Novel' (2025)

Film, television, and radio
======================================================================
* In 1935 and 1936, Zora Neale Hurston shot documentary footage as
part of her fieldwork in Florida and Haiti. Included are rare
ethnographic evidence of the Hoodoo and Vodou religion in the U.S. and
Haiti.
* Some footage claimed to be by Hurston from 1928 is accessible from
the Internet Archive.
* In 1989, PBS aired a drama based on Hurston's life entitled 'Zora is
My Name!.'
* The 1992-95 PBS children's television series 'Ghostwriter', which
had an emphasis on reading and writing skills, featured the lead
characters attending the fictitious Zora Neale Hurston Middle School
in the Fort Greene neighborhood of Brooklyn, New York.
* The 2004 film 'Brother to Brother', set in part during the Harlem
Renaissance, featured Hurston (portrayed by Aunjanue Ellis).
* ' Their Eyes Were Watching God' was adapted for a 2005 film of the
same title by Oprah Winfrey's Harpo Productions, with a teleplay by
Suzan-Lori Parks. The film starred Halle Berry as Janie Starks.
* On April 9, 2008, PBS broadcast a 90-minute documentary, 'Zora Neale
Hurston: Jump at the Sun', written and produced by filmmaker Kristy
Andersen, as part of the 'American Masters' series.
* In 2009, Hurston was featured in a 90-minute documentary about the
WPA Writers' Project titled 'Soul of a People: Writing America's
Story', which premiered on the Smithsonian Channel. Her work in
Florida during the 1930s is highlighted in the companion book, 'Soul
of a People: The WPA Writers' Project Uncovers Depression America'.
* In 2017, Jackie Kay presented a 30-minute BBC Radio 4 documentary
about Hurston called 'A Woman Half in Shadow', first broadcast on
April 17, and subsequently available as a podcast.
* TLC's Rozonda Thomas plays Hurston in the 2017 film 'Marshall'.
* In January 2017, the documentary "Zora Neale Hurston: Claiming a
Space" premiered on PBS.

See also
======================================================================
* Florida literature
* Kevin Brown (author)

Citations
===========
* 28th Zora Neale Hurston Festival of the Arts and Humanities. ZORA!
Festival. The Association to Preserve the Eatonville Community, 2017.
Web. 10 April 2017.
* Abcarian, Richard, and Marvin Klotz. "Zora Neale Hurston". In
'Literature: The Human Experience', 9th edition. New York: Bedford/St.
Martin's, 2006, pp. 1562-1563.
* Anderson, Christa S. "African American Women". PBS. Public
Broadcasting Service, 2005. Web. 9 April 2017.
* Baym, Nina (ed.), "Zora Neale Hurston". In 'The Norton Anthology of
American Literature', 6th edition, Vol. D. New York, W. W. Norton
& Co., 2003, pp. 1506-1507.
* Beito, David T. "Zora Neale Hurston", American Enterprise 6
(September/October 1995), pp. 61-63.
* Beito, David T. and Beito, Linda Royster,
"[http://www.independent.org/pdf/tir/tir_12_04_4_beito.pdf Isabel
Paterson, Rose Wilder Lane, and Zora Neale Hurston on War, Race, the
State, and Liberty] ". 'Independent Review' 12 (Spring 2008).
* Boyd, Valerie (2003). 'Wrapped in Rainbows: The Life of Zora Neale
Hurston'. New York: Scribner. .
* Ellis, C. Arthur. 'Zora Hurston And The Strange Case Of Ruby
McCollum', 1st edition. Lutz, FL: Gadfly Publishing, 2009.
* Estate of Zora Neale Hurston. "Zora Neale Hurston." The Official
Website of Zora Neale Hurston. Zora Neale Hurston Trust, 2015. Web.
11 April 2017.
* Flynn, Elisabeth, Caitlin Deasy, and Rachel Ruah. "The Upbringing
and Education of Zora Neale Hurston". Project Mosaic: Hurston. Rollins
College, 11 July 2011. Web. 11 April 2017.
* Harrison, Beth. "Zora Neale Hurston and Mary Austin: A Case Study in
Ethnography, Literary Modernism, and Contemporary Ethnic Fiction.
MELUS. 21.2 (1996) 89-106. .
* Hemenway, Robert E. 'Zora Neale Hurston: A Literary Biography'.
Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1977. .
* Hemenway, Robert E. "Zora Neale Hurston." In Paul Lauter and Richard
Yarborough (eds.), 'The Heath Anthology of American Literature', 5th
edition, Vol. D. New York: Houghton Mifflin Co., 2006, pp. 1577-1578.
* Jones, Sharon L. 'A Critical Companion to Zora Neale Hurston: A
Literary Reference to Her Life and Work' (New York: Facts on File,
2009).
* Kaplan, Carla (ed.). 'Zora Neale Hurston: A Life in Letters'. New
York: Random House, 2003.
* Kraut, Anthea, "Between Primitivism and Diaspora: The Dance
Performances of Josephine Baker, Zora Neale Hurston, and Katherine
Dunham", 'Theatre Journal' 55 (2003), pp. 433-450.
* Menefee, Samuel Pyeatt, "Zora Neale Hurston (1891-1960)." In Hilda
Ellis Davidson and Carmen Blacker (eds.), 'Women and Tradition: A
Neglected Group of Folklorists', Durham, NC: Carolina Academic Press,
2000, pp. 157-172.
* Trefler, Annette. "Possessing the Self: Caribbean Identities in
Zora Neale Hurston's Tell My Horse." African American Review. 34.2
(2000): 299-312.
* Tucker, Cynthia. "Zora! Celebrated Storyteller Would Have Laughed at
Controversy Over Her Origins. She Was Born In Notasulga, Alabama but
Eatonville Fla., Claims Her As Its Own"; article documents Kristy
Andersen's research into Hurston's birthplace; 'Atlanta
Journal-Constitution', January 22, 1995.
* Visweswaran, Kamala. 'Fictions of Feminist Ethnography.'
Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1994.
* Walker, Alice. "In Search of Zora Neale Hurston", 'Ms.' (March
1975), pp. 74-79, 84-89.

Further reading
======================================================================
*
* Delbanco, Andrew, "The Political Incorrectness of Zora Neale
Hurston", 'The Journal of Blacks in Higher Education', No. 18 (Winter
1997-1998), pp. 103-108.
* Green, Sharony (2023).
'[https://www.hfsbooks.com/books/the-chase-and-ruins-green/ The Chase
and Ruins: Zora Neale Hurston in Honduras]'. Johns Hopkins University
Press. .
*
*
* Lucy Anne Hurston (her niece), 'Speak So You Can Speak Again'.
* Freeman Marshall, Jennifer L. 'Ain't I An Anthropologist: Zora Neale
Hurston Beyond the Literary Icon'. University of Illinois Press, 2023.
* Moylan VL. 'Zora Neale Hurston's Final Decade'. University Press of
Florida; 2011.
* Plant, Deborah G. 'Zora Neale Hurston: A Biography of the Spirit'.
Praeger Publishers, 2007.
* Norwood, Arlisha R.
[https://www.womenshistory.org/education-resources/biographies/zora-hurston
"Zora Hurston"]. National Women's History Museum. 2017
*
[https://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/2012/02/famous-contributors-zora-neale-hurston/
Zora Neale Hurston's "The Conscience of the Court"] in 'The Saturday
Evening Post'

External links
======================================================================
*
*
[https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/films/zora-neale-hurston-claiming-space/
Zora Neale Hurston: Claiming a Space]
*
[http://teachrock.org/wp-content/uploads/Handout_2_-_Zora_Neale_Hurston_and_Hoodoo.pdf/
Zora Neale Hurston: Folklore and Hoodoo]
* [http://www.galegroup.com/free_resources/bhm/bio/hurston_z.htm Zora
Neale Hurston] from the 'Concise Dictionary of American Literary
Biography'
* [https://zorafestival.org/ Zora Neale Hurston Festival of the Arts
and Humanities (ZORA! Festival)]
* [http://www.c-span.org/video/?169204-1/writings-hughes-hurston
Writings of Hughes and Hurston] from C-SPAN's 'American Writers: A
Journey Through History'
* [https://wfpp.columbia.edu/pioneer/zora-neale-hurston/ Zora Neale
Hurston] at Women Film Pioneers Project at Columbia University
*
*

Libraries and archives
========================
* [http://www.howard.edu/library/reference/guides/hurston/ Zora Neale
Hurston: 1891-1960] guide at Howard University
*
*
[https://web.archive.org/web/20120402045432/http://social.rollins.edu/wpsites/mosaic-hurston/
Project Mosaic: Zora Neale Hurston] (Rollins College)
*
[https://web.archive.org/web/20120426001150/http://asp3.rollins.edu/olin/oldsite/archives/hurston.htm
Olin Library Special Collection and Archive Zora Neale Hurston
Collection] (Rollins College)
* [https://archives.nypl.org/scm/20707 Zora Neale Hurston Collection]
at the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture
*
[https://web.archive.org/web/20060903231722/http://www.floridamemory.com/Collections/folklife/sound_hurston.cfm
Sound recordings of Hurston in the 1930s] at the State Library and
Archives of Florida
*
[https://web.archive.org/web/20090727061724/http://pegasus.cc.ucf.edu/~zoraneal/
Zora Neale Hurston Digital Archive] at the University of Central
Florida
* [http://ufdc.ufl.edu/zora/ University of Florida Digital Collections
Archive] at the University of Florida
*
[http://drs.library.yale.edu:8083/saxon/SaxonServlet?style=http://drs.library.yale.edu:8083/saxon/EAD/yul.ead2002.xhtml.xsl&source=http://drs.library.yale.edu:8083/fedora/get/beinecke:hurston/EAD&query=zora%20neale%20hurston&filter=&hitPageStart=1
Zora Neale Hurston Collection] . James Weldon Johnson Collection in
the Yale Collection of American Literature, Beinecke Rare Book and
Manuscript Library.
* [https://conservancy.umn.edu/handle/11299/166231 Voices from the
Gap's biography] - University of Minnesota

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