Zora Neale Hurston

Zora Neale Hurston was born on January 7, 1891 in Notasulga, Alabama. Her father, John Hurston was a Baptist preacher, carpenter and tenant farmer practicing each as the need arose. Her mother, Lucy Ann Potts Hurston was a school teacher. When Zora was three, the family moved to Eatonville, Florida, which was the first all black town to be incorporated in the United States. Her father eventually became mayor of the town and Zora later wrote that it was a place that black Americans could live as they desired, independent of white society. In 1904 Lucy died and John soon married again. Zora was sent away to school in Jacksonville, Florida and worked part time as a maid.

In 1917, Zora began studying at the high school division of Morgan College in Baltimore, Maryland. In order to qualify for a free education Zora claimed her birth year was 1901. She graduated from high school at the age of 27. She started her undergraduate studies at Howard University that same year. She was co-founder of The Hilltop, the student newspaper. She left Howard in 1924 and was offered a scholarship to Barnard College where she would be the only black student. While here she conducted ethnographic research with Franz Boas of Columbia University. She also worked with Ruth Benedict and Margaret Mead. In 1927 she received a B.A. in anthropology and spent the next 2 years as a graduate student at Columbia University.

Zora had arrived in New York City at the peak of the Harlem Renaissance in 1925. Before she entered Barnard her 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. The following year a group of young black writers (calling themselves the “Niggerati”), including Langston Hughes, Wallace Thurman and Zora, produced a literary magazine called Fire!!. Many of the young artists and writers of the Harlem Renaissance had their work featured in the magazine.

Zora continued her writing career and had several of her short stories published. Her first 3 novels, Jonah’s Gourd Vine, Their Eyes Were Watching God and Moses, Man of the Mountain were published during the mid to late 30’s. During the 40’s she had work published in the Saturday Evening Post and The American Mercury periodical. Her last published novel was Seraph on the Suwanee, printed in 1948. The novel Their Eyes Were Watching God was considered her masterwork and had been completed during her fieldwork in Haiti.

Zora’s outspoken beliefs caused her nothing but grief. When the battle of desegregation was being fought she let it be known that black children did not have to go to school with whites in order to receive an education. She had the black community supporting this movement up in arms. She also wrote an article attacking the rights of the blacks to vote in the South by stating that their votes were being bought and therefore were not their own.

Her last years were lived in poverty with no one knowing or caring where she was. She ended her working career as domestic help, the same way she started. She was working on another book, The Life of Herod the Great but died before it was finished. She suffered a severe stroke in 1959 and was committed to the Saint Lucie County Welfare Home in Fort Pierce, Florida to live out her days. She died on January 28, 1960 of hypertensive heart disease.