CHRONOLOGY

January 7, 1891		Born in Eatonville, Florida, the fifth of eight children, to John Hurston, a carpenter and Baptist preacher, and Lucy Potts Hurston, a former schoolteacher.
September 1917-June 1918		Attends Morgan Academy in Baltimore, completing the high school requirements.
Summer 1918		Works as a waitress in a nightclub and a manicurist in a black-owned barbershop that serves only whites.
1918-19		Attends Howard Prep School, Washington, D.C.
1919-24		Attends Howard University; receives an associate degree in 1920.
1921		Publishes her first story, “John Redding Goes to Sea,” in the 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 awards; publishes “Spunk” in the June number.
1925-27		Attends Barnard College, studying anthropology with Franz Boas.
1926		Begins field work for Boas in Harlem.
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.
February 1927		Goes to Florida to collect folklore.
May 19, 1927		Marries Herbert Sheen.
September 1927		First visits Mrs. Rufus Osgood Mason, seeking patronage.
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.”
December 1927		Signs a contract with Mason, enabling her to return to the South to collect folklore.
1928		Satirized as “Sweetie Mae Carr” in Wallace Thurman’s novel about the Harlem Renaissance Infants of the Spring; receives a bachelor of arts degree from Barnard.
January 1928		Relations with Sheen break off.
May 1928		Publishes “How It Feels to Be Colored Me” in the World Tomorrow.
1930-32		Organizes the field notes that become Mules and Men.
May-June 1930		Works on the play Mule Bone with Langston Hughes.
1931		Publishes “Hoodoo in America” in the Journal of American Folklore.
February 1931		Breaks with Langston Hughes over the authorship of Mule Bone.
July 7, 1931		Divorces Sheen.
September 1931		Writes for a theatrical revue called Fast and Furious.
January 1932		Writes and stages a theatrical revue called The Great Day, first performed on January 10 on Broadway at the John Golden Theatre; works with the creative literature department of Rollins College, Winter Park, Florida, to produce a concert program of Negro music.
1933		Writes “The Fiery Chariot.”
January 1933		Stages From Sun to Sun (a version of Great Day) at Rollins College.
August 1933		Publishes “The Gilded Six-Bits” in Story.
1934		Publishes six essays in Nancy Cunard’s anthology, Negro.
January 1934		Goes to Bethune-Cookman College to establish a school of dramatic arts “based on pure Negro expression.”
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.
November 1934		Singing Steel (a version of Great Day) performed in Chicago.
January 1935		Makes an abortive attempt to study for a Ph.D in anthropology at Columbia University on a fellowship from the Rosenwald Foundation. In fact, she seldom attends classes.
August 1935		Joins the WPA Federal Theatre Project as a “dramatic coach.”
October 1935		Mules and Men published.
March 1936		Awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship to study West Indian Obeah practices.
April-September 1936		In Jamaica.
September-March 1937		In Haiti; writes Their Eyes Were Watching God in seven weeks.
May 1937		Returns to Haiti on a renewed Guggenheim.
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.
April 1938		Joins the Federal Writers Project in Florida to work on The Florida Negro.
1939		Publishes “Now Take Noses” in Cordially Yours.
June 1939		Receives an honorary Doctor of Letters degree from Morgan State College.
June 27, 1939		Marries Albert Price III in Florida.
Summer 1939		Hired as a drama instructor by North Carolina College for Negroes at Durham; meets Paul Green, professor of drama, at the University of North Carolina.
November 1939		Moses, Man of the Mountain published.
February 1940		Files for divorce from Price, though the two are reconciled briefly.
Summer 1940		Makes a folklore-collecting trip to South Carolina.
Spring-July 1941		Writes Dust Tracks on a Road.
July 1941		Publishes “Cock Robin, Beale Street” in the Southern Literary Messenger.
October 1941-January 1942		Works as a story consultant at Paramount Pictures.
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.
February 1943		Awarded the Anisfield-Wolf Book Award in Race Relations for Dust Tracks; on the cover of the Saturday Review.
March 1943		Receives Howard University’s Distinguished Alumni Award.
May 1943		Publishes “The ‘Pet Negro’ Syndrome” in the American Mercury.
November 1943		Divorce from Price granted.
June 1944		Publishes “My Most Humiliating Jim Crow Experience” in the Negro Digest.
1945		Writes Mrs. Doctor; it is rejected by Lippincott.
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.
May 1947		Goes to British Honduras to research black communities in Central America; writes Seraph on the Suwanee; stays in Honduras until March 1948.
September 1948		Falsely accused of molesting a ten-year-old boy and arrested; case finally dismissed in March 1949.
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.
Winter 1950-51		Moves to Belle Glade, Florida.
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.
1952		Hired by the Pittsburgh Courier to cover the Ruby McCollum case.
May 1956		Receives an award for “education and human relations” at Bethune-Cookman College.
June 1956		Works as a librarian at Patrick Air Force Base in Florida; fired in 1957.
1957-59		Writes a column on “Hoodoo and Black Magic” for the Fort Pierce Chronicle.
1958		Works as a substitute teacher at Lincoln Park Academy, Fort Pierce.
Early 1959		Suffers a stroke.
October 1959		Forced to enter the St. Lucie County Welfare Home.
January 28, 1960		Dies in the St. Lucie County Welfare Home of “hypertensive heart disease”; buried in an unmarked grave in the Garden of Heavenly Rest, Fort Pierce.
August 1973		Alice Walker discovers and marks Hurston’s grave.
March 1975		Walker publishes “In Search of Zora Neale Hurston,” in Ms., launching a Hurston revival.