Zora Neale Hurston Across Time : A K12 Resource: Zora Neale Hurston (1891*-1960)

Zora Neale Hurston was an American author, anthropologist, researcher, performer, reporter, folklorist, ethnographer, instructor, filmmaker, playwright and a leader of the Harlem Renaissance.

Hurston was born in Notasulga, Alabama, on January 7, 1891. 

Mr. & Mrs. John and Lucy Ann Hurston. Her father was a Baptist preacher and sharecropper and her mother was a teacher.  He also served as as mayor of Eatonville three times.

Yes. She was the fifth of eight children. 

Zora Neale Hurston moved with her family to Eatonville, Florida in 1894 at the age of three and lived her childhood there. Often considering Eatonville, Florida, home, Zora Neale Hurston used the town as the setting for many of her works. She described the experience of growing up in Eatonville in her 1928 essay, "How It Feels To Be Colored Me".  Eatonville, Florida, established in 1887, is the first self-governing, all-Black incorporated town in the United States.

She also attended boarding school in Jacksonville, but it was in Eauu Gallie that she wrote and published an anthology on African-American folklore in North Florida, Mules and Men (1935).

Throughout her life, her work took her to various Florida cities.

She spent time in Live Oak covering the 1952 trial of Ruby McCollum, a Black woman who was charged with murdering a white man, for the Pittsburgh Courier.

She worked as a folklorist and contributor to the Florida division of the Federal Writers’ Project (FWP), part of the Works Progress Administration. During which, she recorded life within small African-American communities like that in Cross City in Dixie County and arranged interviews with locals at Jacksonville's Clara White Mission. 

She established a school of dramatic arts "based on pure Negro expression" at Bethune-Cookman University (at the time, Bethune-Cookman College), a historically black college in Daytona Beach. Where it is said she lived on a houseboat off the Hallifax River. 

She worked and or lived in Cocoa, Merritt Island, Belle Glade and Fort Peirce.

Zora Neale Hurston's accomplishments and honors are numerous. Many were received posthumously. The following is a select list.

• Eatonville, Florida, is home to the annual, week-long Zora Neale Hurston Festival of the Arts and Humanities, the Zora Neale Hurston Museum of Fine Arts, and the Zora Neale Hurston branch of the Orange County Public Library.

• Fort Pierce, Florida, is home to the Zora Neale Hurston House and is a National Historic Landmark. 

• After locating and marking Zora Neale Hurston's grave, Alice Walker wrote "In Search of Zora Neale Hurston" which rekindled interest in Hurston's work.

• Mule Bone: A Comedy of Negro Life, a play written by Hurston and Langston Hughes was staged in 1991 in New York City.

• Hurston was inducted into the National Women's Hall of Fame, New York Writers Hall of Fame and Alabama Writers Hall of Fame.

• Hurston was included in a list of 100 Greatest African Americans in 2002 by Molefi Kete Asante.

• Hurston's works have centered many national and international academic conferences.

• The American Library Association established the Zora Neale Hurston Award to honor a member who has "demonstrated leadership in promoting African American literature".

• She has been the focus of many works, including novels, children books, biographies, documentaries and essays.

• She was featured in a Google doodle to celebrate what would have been her 123rd birthday.

• Portions of her works appear in Ava DuVernay's August 28: A Day in the Life of a People.

• Hurston's Their Eyes Were Watching God was made into a feature length movie. 

• An actress-portrayed cameo of Hurston appears in the film Marshall.

• She produced musical revues: From Sun to Sun, a revised adaptation of The Great Day, which featured African song and dance, and Singing Steel. 

• She received a Guggenheim Fellowship to conduct ethnographic research in Jamaica and Haiti.

• Her Every Tongue Got to Confess (2001), a collection of folktales, and Barracoon (2018) were published posthumously.

Hurston wrote several novels and more than 50 short stories, plays, and essays.

Novels

• Jonah's Gourd Vine (1934) 
• Seraph on the Suwanee (1948)
• Their Eyes Were Watching God (1937)
• Moses, Man of the Mountain (1939)

Nonfiction

• Barracoon (2018)
• Mules and Men (1935)
• Tell My Horse (1938)
• Dust Tracks on a Road (1942)

Collections

• Hitting a Straight Lick with a Crooked Stick: Stories from the Harlem Renaissance (2020)

• You Don't Know Us Negroes (2022) - collection of short nonfiction 

• Negro Folk-tales from the Gulf States was published as Every Tongue Got to Confess. 2001

• Spunk: Selected Stories (1985)

• Collected Plays (2008)

• I Love Myself When I Am Laughing... and Then Again When I Am Looking Mean and Impressive: A Zora Neale Hurston Reader (1979)
• The Complete Stories (1995)
• Zora Neale Hurston: A Life in Letters, collected and edited by Carla Kaplan (2003)
• The Sanctified Church (1981) Compilation of essays

Short Stories

• John Redding Goes to Sea (May 1921)
• Drenched in Light (December 1924)
• Spunk (June 1925)
• Magnolia Flower (July 1925)
• Muttsy (August 1926)
• ‘Possum or Pig? (September 1926)
• The Eatonville Anthology (September- November 1926)
• Sweat (November 1926)
• The Gilded Six-Bits (August 1933)
• Mother Catherine (1934)
• Uncle Monday (1934)
• The Fire and the Cloud (September 1934)
• Cock Robin Beale Street (July 1941)
• Story in Harlem Slang (July 1942)
• High John De Conquer (October 1943)
• Hurricane (1946)
• The Conscience of the Court (March 1950)
• Escape from Pharaoh (1950)
• The Tablets of the Law (1951)
• Black Death
• The Bone of Contention
• Book of Harlem (there's also The Book of Harlem)
• Harlem Slanguage
• How You Cookin’ with Gas
• The Seventh Veil
• The Woman in Gaul

Poetry

• "Journey's End" (Negro World, 1922)
• "Night" (Negro World, 1922)
• "Passion" (Negro World, 1922)

Plays

• Color Struck (Opportunity: A Journal of Negro Life, 1925), play
• Mule Bone: A Comedy of Negro Life, a play with Langston Hughes
• From Sun to Sun, which was a revised adaptation of The Great Day
• Singing Steel

Essays

• "Cudjoe's Own Story of the Last African Slaver" (1928)
• "How It Feels to Be Colored Me" (1928)
• "Hoodoo in America" (1931)
• "What White Publishers Won't Print" (1950)

Due to a number of misadventures and failing health, Zora Neale Hurston lived out her last days at the St. Lucie County Welfare Home where she suffered a stroke. She died on January 28, 1960, and buried in Fort Pierce, Florida. Her whereabouts and unmarked grave went unnoticed until 1973 when her grave was uncovered by Alice Walker and Charlotte D. Hunt. 

Fortunately, works in her possession at the time of her death were not destroyed after her home was cleaned. An alert passerby is credited with saving the collection, which included a number of unpublished works. Hurston's documents were donated to the University of Florida and Yale University.

Hurston's mother died in 1904, and her father subsequently remarried. They sent her to a Baptist boarding school in Jacksonville, Florida. They eventually stopped paying her tuition and she was dismissed. She attended Morgan College, the high school division of Morgan State University, a historically black college in Baltimore, Maryland, from 1914-1918. 

She then attended Howard University in 1918, another historically black college, but this time in neighboring Washington, D.C. Here she joined  the sorority Zeta Phi Beta, co-founded the student newspaper, and joined Alain Locke's literary club.  

After leaving Howard, she attended Barnard College after receiving a scholarship from a trustee. She was the only black student. She received a B.A. in anthropology in 1928.

After graduation, she continued her studies at Columbia University.

Yes, Zora Neale Hurston married three times, but she is not known to have any kids. 

• She married Herbert Sheen In 1927. They divorced in 1931. 
• She married Albert Price in 1939. Although the marriage lasted only a few months, they did not divorce until 1943. 
• She then married James Howell Pitts in 1944. The marriage lasted less than a year. 
• Note of interest: "Tea Cake" in Their Eyes Were Watching God is said to be fashioned after Percy Punter, Hurston's suitor. 

She was a member of Zeta Phi Beta sorority.

While at Howard University she co-founded The Hilltop, the university's student newspaper and was a member of The Stylus, a literary club.

Zora Neale Hurston Field Work 1928

Zora Neale Hurston and WPA in Florida - This educational unit introduces primary source documents, photographs and audio recordings from the collections of the State Library and Archives of Florida and the Library of Congress.

Zora Neale Hurston Plays at the Library of Congress - This collection present ten plays written by Hurston that were deposited as unpublished typescripts in the United States Copyright Office between 1925 and 1944. Most of the plays remained unpublished and unproduced until a manuscript curator rediscovered them in the Copyright Deposit Drama Collection in 1997.

Hurston's Life - Zora Neale Hurston Digital Archive - The purpose of the archive is to create an academic website that will provide a repository of biographical, critical, and contextual materials related to Hurston's life and work

Zora Neale Hurston Institute for Documentary Studies - The University of Central Florida's related resource that explores "the theory and practice of forms of storytelling, cinematic expression, research and programs that encourage civic engagement and meaningfully address the work of excluded communities.".

Life Story: Zora Neale Hurston (1891–1960) - New York Historical Society

Finding Zora - UF Research - University of Florida - The University of Florida is one of four major repositories of archives by and about Zora Neale Hurston. Thousands of pages of material have been catalogued - including correspondence, original copies of manuscripts, published articles, biographical and critical papers, and photographs - all waiting to provide clues about the public and private life of this notable writer and anthropologist.

Zora Neale Hurston: Genius of the South - Interactive website with lessons centering on Jonah's Gourd Vine, Mules and Men, Their Eyes Were Watching God and Seraph on the Suwanee.