Zora Neale Hurston

Zora Neale Hurston was born January 7, 1891. She was the daughter of John Hurston, carpenter and Baptist preacher, and Lucy Potts Hurston, a former schoolteacher. She was also the fifth of eight siblings. Zora obtained the high school credits she needed at Morgan Academy in Baltimore, but she spent a lot of her time as manicurist in a black-owned barbershop that catered to whites only by day and a nightclub waitress by night.

Over the course of her life, she was in two marriages, both of which ended in divorce, but that didn’t stop her from leading an exciting life!

Zora then went on to Howard University for her Associates degree, then to Barnard College to study anthropology, and finally receive a PhD in anthropology from Columbia University. Over this course of time in school, Hurston published many, many different works and received several awards and distinctions during her life time.

Zora also had an extensive number of careers aside from publishing vast amounts of her own work such as: writing for Opportunity, creating her own published journal, creating collaborative works with other famous Harlem Renaissance writers (Langston Hughes, Countee Cullen, are just a couple of those she worked with ), being a librarian and a substitute teacher, teaching a drama class at the North Carolina College for Negros, establishing her own school of dramatic arts at Bethune-Cookman College, and even being a story consultant to Paramount Pictures.

Alongside her many career endeavors, Zora traveled to Haiti and Jamaica for her own leisure and to write in a relaxing environment. Zora also spent a great amount of time collecting folklore from Florida, South Carolina, and other Southern states.

Sadly, Zora Hurston suffered from a stroke in October 1959 causing to live the remainder of her life in St. Lucie County Welfare home where she would die on January 28, 1960. Hurston was buried in an unmarked grave that was discovered by Alice Walker in August 1973. Walker wrote about her discovery causing a spike of interest in Hurston to rise during the spring of 1975.

Hurston reflects upon her life in “How it Feels to Be Colored Me” in which she describes how she didn’t realize how her skin color would ostracize until she began to travel outside of her cozy Eatonville, Florida home that was a colored-only town. Eatonville was formed shortly after the Emancipation Proclamation was signed and was one of the first all-black towns in the history of the United States (Eatonville). Eatonville was named after the Union Army Captain Josiah Eaton who sold the land to a group of African-Americans that wanted to start the town (Eatonville). Presently, the town has an annual festival to celebrate Zora Neale Hurston (Eatonville). She reflects on her curiosity and openness to have relationships with white people, and the different reactions she received from blacks and whites in different parts of the country. Her reflection of the black experience in this piece is very characteristic of the Harlem Renaissance.

Some of her published works include:

1921	Publishes her first story, "John Redding Goes to Sea," in Stylus, the campus literary society's magazine.
December 1924	Publishes "Drenched in Light," a short story, in Opportunity.
1925	Submits a story, "Spunk," and a play, Color Struck, to Opportunity's literary contest. Both win second-place award; publishes "Spunk" in the June number.
January 1926	Publishes "John Redding Goes to Sea" in Opportunity.
Summer 1926	Organizes Fire! With Langston Hughes and Wallace Thurman; they publish only one issue, in November 1926. The issue includes Hurston's "Sweat."
August 1926	Publishes "Muttsy" in Opportunity.
September 1926	Publishes "Possum or Pig" in the Forum.
September - November 1926	Publishes "The Eatonville Anthology" in the Messenger.
1927	Publishes The First One, a play, in Charles S. Johnson's Ebony and Topaz.
October 1927	Publishes an account of the black settlement at St. Augustine, Florida, in the Journal of Negro History; also in this issue: "Cudjo's Own Story of the Last African Slaver."
May 1928	Publishes "How It Feels to be Colored Me" in The World Tomorrow.
1931	Publishes "Hoodoo in America" in the Journal of American Folklore.
February 1931	Breaks with Langston Hughes over the authorship of Mule Bone.
1933	Writes "The Fiery Chariot."
August 1933	Publishes "The Gilded Six-Bits" in Story.
1934	Publishes six essays in Nancy Cunard's anthology, Negro.
May 1934	Publishes Jonah's Gourd Vine, originally titled Big Nigger; it is a Book-of-the-Month Club selection.
September 1934	Publishes "The Fire and the Cloud" in the Challenge.
September 1937	Returns to the United States; Their Eyes Were Watching God published, September 18.
February - March 1938	Writes Tell My Horse; it is published the same year.
1939	Publishes "Now Take Noses" in Cordially Yours.
November 1939	Moses, Man of the Mountain published.
July 1941	Publishes "Cock Robin, Beale Street" in the Southern Literary Messenger.
July 1942	Publishes "Story in Harlem Slang" in the American Mercury.
September 5, 1942	Publishes a profile of Lawrence Silas in the Saturday Evening Post.
November 1942	Dust Tracks on a Road published.
May 1943	Publishes "The 'Pet Negro' Syndrome" in the American Mercury.
June 1944	Publishes "My Most Humiliating Jim Crow Experience" in the Negro Digest.
March 1945	Publishes "The Rise of the Begging Joints" in the American Mercury.
December 1945	Publishes "Crazy for This Democracy" in the Negro Digest.
1947	Publishes a review of Robert Tallant's Voodoo in New Orleans in the Journal of American Folklore.
October 1948	Seraph on the Suwanee published.
March 1950	Publishes "Conscience of the Court" in the Saturday Evening Post, while working as a maid in Rivo Island, Florida.
April 1950	Publishes "What White Publishers Won't Print" in the Saturday Evening Post.
November 1950	Publishes "I Saw Negro Votes Peddled" in the American Legion magazine.
June 1951	Publishes "Why the Negro Won't Buy Communism" in the American Legion magazine.
December 8, 1951	Publishes "A Negro Voter Sizes up Taft" in the Saturday Evening Post.
1957 - 1959	Writes a column on "Hoodoo and Black Magic" for the Fort Pierce Chronicle.