Zora Neale Hurston

Early Life & Education

Zora Neale Hurston was born in 1891 in Notasulga, Alabama, to parents Lucy Potts Hurston and John Cornelius Hurston, who were both born enslaved. She was raised in Eatonville, Florida — the first town in the United States to be founded and governed by African Americans — where her father served as mayor. Young Zora experienced a culturally rich childhood and was very proud of her Florida roots.

After her mother's death in 1904, Zora was sent to school in Jacksonville. The years that followed were marked by poverty and youthful rebellion — but Zora was always working and always learning. She graduated from Howard University in 1920 and Barnard College in 1928.

Early Publications & Anthropology

During the 1920s, Hurston's work with a traveling theater troupe brought her to New York City, where she became a key figure in the Harlem Renaissance (a Black cultural renaissance that took place from about 1915-1930). Her unique writing voice and undeniable intelligence made her many friends in Harlem — poet Langston Hughes and novelist Countee Cullen among them.

The publication of "John Redding Goes to Sea" in The Stylus magazine in May of 1921 and “Drenched in Light” in Opportunity magazine in 1924 helped launch Hurston's literary career. She was prolific throughout her lifetime, writing dozens of short stories, essays, poems, plays, and novels.

While pursuing her master's degree at Columbia University, Hurston studied under Frank Boas — the "Father of American Anthropology." This spurred a lifelong passion for the field. Like Boas, Hurston worked to redefine the practices of anthropology in a way that was more respectful of Indigenous populations.

Her dedication to preserving Black culture extended to Jamaica and Haiti, where she collected folk stories, learned about creole cultures, and published books like Tell My Horse (1938).

The Federal Writer's Project

Near the end of the Great Depression (1929-1939) in 1938 and 1939, Zora Neale Hurston worked for the federal government under the Federal Writer's Project. Stetson Kennedy (Florida native and iconic writer, activist) worked alongside Hurston, collecting oral histories and folklore throughout Florida.

It is significant that Zora Neale Hurston, an African American woman, was employed by the government during the 1930s — to study Black culture, no less! She was one of two Black people on the "Folklore and Ethnic Studies" team and was assigned to her hometown of Eatonville.

Hurston and St. Augustine

Zora Neale Hurston visited and wrote about St. Augustine several times throughout her life. She seems to have considered this "Ancient City" to be a key piece of Florida's story, and several major life events occurred here.

On May 19, 1927, Hurston married musician and medical student Herbert Sheen here at the St. Johns County Courthouse. Although their marriage was short-lived, Hurston's visits to St. Augustine continued for another 20 years.

In October of that same year, Hurston researched Fort Mose (the first legally sanctioned free Black settlement in the United States) and her correspondence about the historic site was published in the Journal of Negro History in October 1927. Though she was not necessarily discovering new information about Fort Mose, her correspondence to the editors shared Mose's existence with a wider audience — sixty years before local archaeologists began digging to find the site.

For a period in the early 1940s, it is known that Hurston rented a room at 791 West King Street, where a historical marker was installed in 2003. In 1942, she briefly served as a teacher at the Florida Normal and Industrial Institute, now relocated to Miami and known as Florida Memorial University. Perhaps most notable about that period was that while she was staying in St. Augustine, Hurston completed and published her memoir Dust Tracks on a Road.

Friendship with Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings

While teaching at Florida Normal, Hurston connected with Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings, author of the Pulitzer Prize winning novel The Yearling.

The two developed a friendship based in literature and mutual admiration. Hurston admired the other author so much that her novel, Seraph of the Suwanee, (the last novel Hurston published before her death) was dedicated to Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings "With Loving Admiration."

While they were both in St. Augustine, Rawlings hosted Hurston at her apartment in the Castle Warden Hotel. (The Castle Warden was built as a private home in 1887 and transformed into a hotel by Rawlings's husband, Norm Baskin, in 1941. It is now the home of St. Augustine's Ripley's Believe It Or Not!)

In a letter to her friend, Edith Pope, Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings described Zora Neale Hurston thusly: "[She has] a most ingratiating personality, a brilliant mind, and a fundamental wisdom that shames most whites."

Legacy

Zora Neale Hurston, misunderstood and underappreciated in her lifetime, left an important part of her legacy in St. Augustine. She passed away on January 28, 1960 at the age of 69.

Writer Alice Walker (author of The Color Purple) is credited with helping to revive interest in Hurston and her works in the 1970s. Walker located Hurston’s unmarked grave in Ft. Pierce, Florida, and installed a headstone at her own expense in 1973.

Hurston's induction into various halls of fame acknowledges her lasting impact. Festivals, lectures, and adaptations of her works continue to celebrate her achievements.

Zora Neale Hurston Memorial Park

In 2016, a greenspace on the corner of Ponce de Leon Blvd and King St. was named the Zora Neale Hurston Memorial Park. The many people passing the park daily are reminded of Zora Neale Hurston's contributions to American literature and her commitment to preserving African American culture, especially in her home state of Florida.

Selected Works

Many of Zora Neale Hurston's works fall under the public domain and can be found online for free. Here are but a few of those works.

Clicking the links below will take you to an external browser.

• 1924 — "Drenched in Light," an autobiographical short story about Zora's childhood in Eatonville. 
  (Read "Drenched in Light" here, hosted by the Library of America.)
• 1926 — "Color Struck," a stageplay that follows a group of young Black people attending a Cake Walk event in St. Augustine, Florida. 
  (Read "Color Struck" here, hosted by Yale University Library.)
• 1934 — Jonah's Gourd Vine, Hurston's debut novel that follows a young couple who moves to Eatonville, Florida.
• 1935 — Mules and Men, an anthropological collection of folk stories, personal anecdotes, songs, and sermons from Zora Neale Hurston's time in Eatonville, Florida.
• 1937 — Their Eyes Were Watching God, Hurston's best known novel, which follows the life of Janie Crawford in central and southern Florida. 
  (Read Their Eyes Were Watching God here, hosted by Toronto Metropolitan University.)
• 1938 — Tell My Horse, an anthropological account of Haitian culture and religion.
• 1942 — Dust Tracks on a Road, an autobiography that Hurston completed while staying here in St. Augustine. 
  (Read here, hosted by Project Gutenberg Canada.)
• 1948 — Seraph on the Suwanee, the last novel Hurston published before her death, which explores the life of a family of Florida "Crackers."
• 1991 — Mule Bone: A Comedy of Negro Life, written with Langston Hughes. 
  (Read The Mule Bone here, hosted by Project Gutenberg.)

Resources

Online Sources

• Tap here to explore the digital exhibit “Zora Neale Hurston’s St. Augustine,” from the University of Florida Libraries.
• Tap here to explore a full timeline of Zora Neale Hurston’s life, from the University of Central Florida.
• Tap here to explore a learning unit about Zora Neale Hurston from the Florida State Archives.
• Tap here to read “Zora Neale Hurston: Scientist, Folklorist, Storyteller,” by Mary Catherine Russell from the University of Tennessee.
• Tap here to read “The Sum of Life: Zora Neale Hurston," by Michael Adno from the Bitter Southerner magazine.
• Tap here to read a biography of Zora Neale Hurston from the National Women’s History Museum by tapping here.
• Tap here to read the St. Augustine Record article “Where History Lives: Zora Neale Hurston wrote from King Street Home in St. Augustine,” by Anne C. Heyman.