Zora Neale Hurston was an anthropologist, folklorist and novelist who was a member of the Harlem Renaissance.
Zora Neale Hurston was an anthropologist, folklorist and novelist who was a member of the Harlem Renaissance. Zora was born in Alabama on January 7, 1891, and moved with her family to Eatonville, Florida when she was a toddler. Her writings reflect a deep connection to Eatonville, a rural community near Orlando that was established in 1887 as the nation’s first incorporated black township. She described her hometown as “a city of five lakes, three croquet courts, three hundred brown skins, three hundred good swimmers, plenty guavas, two schools, and no jailhouse.”
In Eatonville, Zora was exposed to Black achievement everywhere she looked: at the town hall she saw Black men, including her father, John Hurston, governing the city. In the town’s two churches, she saw Black women, including her mother, Lucy Potts Hurston, leading Sunday School. At the village store, she saw Black men and women telling stories that brought the outside world to life.
Zora attended the Florida Baptist Academy boarding school in Jacksonville but was expelled in 1905 because she was unable to pay her tuition. In Jacksonville, Hurston experienced racism for the first time in her life. She explained that it “made me know that I was a little colored girl.” Despite those experiences, she chose to live in Jacksonville with her brother, John Hurston, and sister-in-law, Blanche King Hurston from 1904 to 1914.
In 1928, Zora completed her bachelor’s degree in anthropology at New York’s Barnard College. She was the College’s first black graduate and used her anthropological training to collect the folklore and stories of Blacks and rural whites. She traveled throughout Duval County and up the East Coast collecting stories, writing and performing the stories for other communities.
From 1935 to 1937, in the midst of the Great Depression, Zora oversaw the “Negro Unit” of the Federal Writers Project, which was designed to capture the stories of elderly community members. Her unit was located at the Clara White Mission on West Ashley Street, which was founded by fellow local community leader Eartha M.M. White. Zora’s experience influenced what became one of her greatest works, “Their Eyes Were Watching God,” which was published in 1937. It describes the life of a teenage Black girl growing up in Florida and became the most well-known of her seven books.
Hurston died in poverty on January 28, 1960, despite the successful publication of four novels, two folklore books, short stories, essays, articles, and an autobiography. She is remembered for giving voice to stories of communities that had been overlooked and capturing them in ways that resonated in the everyday lives of all Americans.
