Zora Neale Hurston

BORN: JANUARY 7, 1891, NOTASULGA, AL

DIED: JANUARY 28, 1960, FORT PIERCE, FL

Research is formalized curiosity. It is poking and prying with a purpose.

Zora Neale Hurston’s mother, a former schoolteacher, encouraged Zora to “jump at the sun” and explore the creative talents she expressed as a child, despite her father’s efforts to tame her rebellious spirit. Zora followed her mother’s advice and engaged in numerous adventures on her path to literary success. Zora was a somewhat controversial personality because she used African American dialect in some of her writing. She could be outspoken, and sometimes she expressed unpopular political views.

Zora was a novelist, folklorist, anthropologist, and influential member of the community of artists and writers of the Harlem Renaissance. She was a contemporary of and onetime collaborator with Langston Hughes. She wrote four novels, several musicals, and more than fifty short stories. As an anthropologist, Zora conducted documentary research on cultural rituals in Jamaica and Haiti. Her most famous work is the novel Their Eyes Were Watching God.

Born in her grandparents’ hometown of Notasulga, Alabama, Zora later moved with her parents, Lucy Ann and John Hurston, and siblings to Eatonville, Florida, an independent, self-governing Black town where her father was elected mayor in 1897. Zora used many of the town personalities as models for characters in her stories.

During Franklin Roosevelt’s administration, Zora worked for the WPA in New York City and in the South as a freelance newspaper reporter and a substitute teacher, and in a variety of odd jobs to support her career as a writer. Although she traveled extensively, utilizing her rich academic background and literary skills, Zora died in relative obscurity, without financial stability. She was buried in an unmarked grave. Alice Walker is credited with reviving interest in Zora’s career in her 1979 Ms. magazine article, “In Search of Zora Neale Hurston.” Zora’s work is now celebrated annually at literature festivals in Eatonville and throughout the United States.