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Zora Neale Hurston was an American writer, anthropologist, folklorist, and documentary filmmaker. She portrayed racial struggles in the early-20th-century American South and published research on Hoodoo and Caribbean Vodou. The most popular of her four novels is Their Eyes Were Watching God, published in 1937. She also wrote more than 50 short stories, plays, an autobiography, ethnographies, and m…
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culture · American author, anthropologist, filmmaker (1891–1960) · anthropologist · historian · novelist · writer · journalist · folklorist · civil rights advocate · playwright · film director · also Zora Neale Hurston, Zora N. Hurston, Hurston
Born 7 January 1891 · Died 28 January 1960 · Q220480
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Zora Neale Hurston fieldwork footage (1928)
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Then you must tell ’em dat love ain’t somethin’ lak uh grindstone dat’s de same thing everywhere and do de same thing tuh everything it touch. Love is lak de sea. It’s uh movin’ thing, but still and all, it takes its shape from de shore it meets, and it’s different with every shore.
It’s uh known fact, Pheoby, you got tuh go there tuh know there. Yo’ papa and yo’ mama and nobody else can’t tell yuh and show yuh. Two things everybody’s got tuh do fuh theyselves. They got tuh go tuh God, and they got tuh find out about livin’ fuh theyselves.
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“Then you must tell ’em dat love ain’t somethin’ lak uh grindstone dat’s de same thing everywhere and do de same thing tuh everything it touch. Love is lak de sea. It’s uh movin’ thing, but still and all, it takes its shape from de shore it meets, and it’s different with every shore.”
“It’s uh known fact, Pheoby, you got tuh go there tuh know there. Yo’ papa and yo’ mama and nobody else can’t tell yuh and show yuh. Two things everybody’s got tuh do fuh theyselves. They got tuh go tuh God, and they got tuh find out about livin’ fuh theyselves.”
The New York Times: Zora Neale Hurston
Yahoo: From greatness to poverty and back for Florida's Zora Neale Hurston
The New Yorker: Why Zora Neale Hurston Was Obsessed with the Jews
To coincide with Hurston's birthday, her unfinished novel The Life of Herod the Great was published by HarperCollins
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People: Zora Neale Hurston to Posthumously Publish New Novel, Inspired by Biblical Figure Herod the Great (Exclusive)
Essence: Tracy Heather Strain Uncovers The Truth About Zora Neale Hurston In New Documentary
The Atlantic: Zora Neale Hurston Is for Everyone
The Washington Post: Zora Neale Hurston was once forgotten. A new book reminds us why her voice must be heard.
Publishers Weekly: Books by Zora Neale Hurston and Complete Book Reviews
Comic creator Peter Bagge published a graphic novel based on her life and works called Fire
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UNC students called for Saunders Hall (named after former Ku Klux Klan leader William L
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SFGate: Zora Neale Hurston: 5 Fast Facts You Need to Know
The 123rd anniversary of Hurston's birthday was commemorated by a Google Doodle
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Awarded Alabama Women's Hall of Fame (2013).
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The Library of America selected excerpts from Ruby McCollum: Woman in the Suwannee Jail (1956), to which Hurston had contributed, for inclusion in its two-century retrospective of American true crime writing
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Scholar Molefi Kete Asante listed Zora Neale Hurston on his list of 100 Greatest African Americans
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Hurston's manuscript Every Tongue Got to Confess, a collection of folktales gathered in the 1920s, was published after being discovered in the Smithsonian archives
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Awarded National Women's Hall of Fame (1994).
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Hurston was inducted into the National Women's Hall of Fame
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Mule Bone: A Comedy of Negro Life, a 1930 play by Langston Hughes and Hurston, was first staged; it was staged in New York City by the Lincoln Center Theater
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Awarded Florida Women's Hall of Fame (1984).
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Stetson Kennedy of Jacksonville, who knew Hurston through his work with the Federal Writers' Project, added additional papers
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Fifteen years after Hurston's death, interest in her work was revived after author Alice Walker published an article, "In Search of Zora Neale Hurston" (later retitled "Looking for Zora"), in Ms
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In the general area where Hurston had been buried; they decided to mark it as hers
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For opposing integration and for opposing programs to guarantee blacks the right to work
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And 1971 by Frances Grover, daughter of E
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Died 1960-01-28.
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And was buried at the Garden of Heavenly Rest in Fort Pierce, Florida
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For being "too well-educated" for her job
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“McCollum's testimony in her own defense marked the first time that a woman of African-American descent was allowed to testify as to the paternity of her child by a white man. Hurston firmly believed that Ruby McCollum's testimony sounded the death toll of 'paramour rights' in the Segregationist South.”
Hurston received the Bethune-Cookman College Award for Education and Human Relations in recognition of her achievements
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Hurston supported the presidential campaign of Senator Robert A
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Hurston was assigned by the Pittsburgh Courier to cover the small-town murder trial of Ruby McCollum, the prosperous black wife of the local bolita racketeer, who had killed a racist white doctor
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Criticized the New Deal by arguing that it had created a harmful dependency on the government among African Americans and she also argued that this dependency ceded too much power to politicians
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For example, Hurston argued that New Deal economic support had created a harmful dependency by African Americans on the government and that this dependency ceded too much power to politicians
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Awarded Anisfield-Wolf Book Awards (1943).
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Harold Preece criticized Hurston for her perpetuation of "Negro primitivism" in order to advance her own literary career
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Hurston addressed the Carolina Dramatic Association, remarking that "our drama must be like us or it doesn't exist
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While Hurston was working for the WPA in Florida, she married Albert Price
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And 1939, Hurston worked for the Federal Writers’ Project (FWP), part of the Works Progress Administration
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Awarded Guggenheim Fellowship (1937).
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Hurston was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship to conduct ethnographic research in Jamaica and Haiti
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Awarded Guggenheim Fellowship (1936).
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And 1937, Hurston traveled to Jamaica and Haiti for research, with support from the Guggenheim Foundation
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And 1936, Zora Neale Hurston shot documentary footage as part of her fieldwork in Florida and Haiti
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Hurston traveled to Georgia and Florida with Alan Lomax and Mary Elizabeth Barnicle for research on African-American song traditions and their relationship to slave and African antecedent music
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Hurston was involved with Percy Punter, a graduate student at Columbia University
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Hurston established a school of dramatic arts "based on pure Negro expression" at Bethune-Cookman College, a historically black college in Daytona Beach, Florida later to be known as Bethune-Cookman University
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Collaborated with Langston Hughes on Mule Bone: A Comedy of Negro Life, a play that they never staged
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Hurston moved to Eau Gallie, Florida, where she wrote Mules and Men
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Studied at Barnard College, Bachelor of Arts (1925–1928).
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“Cudjoe's Own Story of the Last African Slaver”
“How It Feels to Be Colored Me”
Hurston returned to Alabama with additional resources; she conducted more interviews with Lewis, took photographs of him and others in the community, and recorded the only known film footage of him—an African who had bee
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“Cudjo's Own Story of the Last African Slaver”
Hurston traveled to the Deep South to collect African-American folk tales
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Hurston married Herbert Sheen, a jazz musician and a former teacher at Howard
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A group of young black writers including Hurston, Langston Hughes, and Wallace Thurman, calling themselves the Niggerati, produced a literary magazine called Fire
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The Harlem Renaissance was at its zenith, and she soon became one of the writers at its center
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Hurston was offered a scholarship by Barnard trustee Annie Nathan Meyer to Barnard College of Columbia University
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Hurston helped publish the inaugural issue of the school newspaper
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Wrote a short story, "John Redding Goes to Sea", that qualified her to become a member of Alain Locke's literary club, The Stylus
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Hurston began her studies at Howard University, a historically black college in Washington, DC
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Resumed her formal education by attending night school at Morgan Academy, now known as Morgan State University, a historically black college in Baltimore, Maryland
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Hurston was employed as a maid by the lead singer of a touring Gilbert & Sullivan theatrical company
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Was called to serve as minister of its largest church, Macedonia Missionary Baptist
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Some northern school teachers visited Eatonville and gave Hurston several books that opened her mind to literature
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Her father was elected as mayor of the town
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Born 1891-01-07.
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The fifth of eight children of John Hurston and Lucy Ann Hurston (née Potts)
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It was one of the first all-black towns incorporated in the United States
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And thus the last known person to have been transported in the Transatlantic slave trade
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