Zora Neale Hurston

Zora Neale Hurston
Carl Van Vechten · Public domain · source
Name	Zora Neale Hurston
Caption	Hurston in 1935
Birth date	January 7, 1891
Birth place	Notasulga, Alabama, U.S.
Death date	January 28, 1960
Death place	Fort Pierce, Florida, U.S.
Occupation	Author, Anthropologist, Folklorist
Education	Howard University (AA), Barnard College (BA)
Notableworks	Their Eyes Were Watching God, Mules and Men, Dust Tracks on a Road

Zora Neale Hurston Zora Neale Hurston was an influential American author, anthropologist, and key figure of the Harlem Renaissance. Her work celebrated the cultural traditions and folklore of the African-American communities of the American South, particularly in her home state of Florida. While her literary contributions are widely recognized, her complex and often contrarian political views, which emphasized self-reliance and cultural pride over direct political activism, place her in a unique and debated position within the broader narrative of the Civil Rights Movement.

Early Life and Education

Zora Neale Hurston was born in Notasulga, Alabama, in 1891, but her family moved to Eatonville, Florida, when she was a toddler. Eatonville was one of the first all-black incorporated towns in the United States, and its existence as a self-governing African-American community profoundly shaped Hurston’s worldview. Her father, John Hurston, was a Baptist preacher and carpenter who served three terms as the town’s mayor. After her mother’s death and subsequent family strife, Hurston worked various jobs, eventually attending Morgan Academy in Baltimore. She later enrolled at Howard University, a prestigious historically black university, where she co-founded the student newspaper, *The Hilltop*, and earned an associate degree. Her literary talent caught the attention of professor Alain Locke, a leading intellectual of the New Negro Movement. With Locke’s encouragement, she moved to New York City in 1925 and secured a scholarship to Barnard College, the women's college of Columbia University. At Barnard, she studied anthropology under the renowned scholar Franz Boas, who mentored her in systematic ethnographic fieldwork.

Literary Career and the Harlem Renaissance

Hurston became a vibrant central figure in the Harlem Renaissance, a flourishing of African-American art and literature in the 1920s and 1930s. She was a regular contributor to the influential magazine *Fire!!*, which she helped found with other young artists like Langston Hughes and Wallace Thurman. Her early short stories, such as “Sweat” and “The Gilded Six-Bits,” were published in *Opportunity* magazine. Her first novel, *Jonah's Gourd Vine*, was published in 1934. Her most celebrated work, *Their Eyes Were Watching God*, was published in 1937. This novel, now considered a classic of American literature, is a lyrical exploration of a black woman’s journey for self-discovery and love in the Florida Everglades. Unlike some of her contemporaries who focused on themes of racial protest, Hurston’s fiction centered on the internal lives, humor, and rich vernacular speech of rural African-American communities. This focus sometimes brought her into ideological conflict with other Harlem Renaissance figures, such as Richard Wright, who criticized her work for not being politically engaged.

Anthropological Work and Folklore Studies

Parallel to her literary career, Hurston was a trained and pioneering anthropologist. Funded by fellowships from the Association for the Study of Negro Life and History and private patrons like Charlotte Osgood Mason, she conducted extensive fieldwork throughout the American South and the Caribbean. Her research focused on collecting folklore, songs, and cultural practices. This work culminated in her seminal anthropological collections, *Mules and Men* (1935) and *Tell My Horse* (1938), which documented Vodou practices in Haiti and Jamaica. Her approach was participant-observational, immersing herself in the communities she studied. This scholarly work directly informed her fiction, providing an authentic foundation for the dialects and folk traditions depicted in novels like *Their Eyes Were Watching God*. Her collaboration with Alan Lomax of the Library of Congress helped preserve significant folk music recordings. Hurston’s anthropological contributions provided an invaluable record of African-American and diasporic cultural heritage, emphasizing its intrinsic value and complexity.

Political Views and Stance on Civil Rights

Hurston’s political views were individualistic and often placed her at odds with the emerging mainstream of the Civil Rights Movement. A staunch Republican and supporter of conservative principles like self-reliance and limited government, she was skeptical of New Deal programs and organized protest. She famously opposed the 1954 Brown v. Board of Education Supreme Court decision, arguing in a letter to the *Orlando Sentinel* that it implied African-American schools were inherently inferior and undermined the legacy of black educators. Hurston valued the integrity of distinct cultural institutions and was wary of integration that she felt could lead to assimilation and loss of community identity. She criticized figures like Walter White of the NAACP and openly clashed with W.E.B. Du Bois. Her novel *Seraph on the Suwanee* (1948), focusing on poor white Florida crackers, further demonstrated her belief that human experience transcended racial categories. These positions, combined with unsubstantiated but damaging personal accusations, led to her marginalization by the left-leaning literary and political establishment of the mid-20th century.

Later Years and Legacy

After the 1940s, Hurston’s literary career waned, and she struggled financially. She worked as a maid, a librarian, and a substitute teacher. In 1948, she was falsely accused of moral turpitude charges related to an incident with a young boy; although the charges were dismissed, the scandal damaged her reputation. She continued to write, publishing her controversial autobiography, *Dust Tracks on a Road*, in 1942, and worked on manuscripts that were later published posthumously, such as *Barracoon*. She spent her final years in Fort Pierce, Florida, in relative obscurity and poverty. Hurston died in 1960 from complications of a stroke and was buried in an unmarked grave. Her work was rediscovered in the 1970s, largely due to the efforts of author Alice Walker, who published the essay “In Search of Zora Neale Hurston” in *Ms.* magazine and located her grave. Today, Hurston is celebrated as a preeminent literary voice and a foundational figure in African-American literature and anthropology. Her complex legacy continues to generate scholarly debate, particularly regarding the role of individualism and cultural preservation within the context of American social progress.

Category:American anthropologists Category:Harlem Renaissance writers Category:Writers from Florida