Zora Neale Hurston’s life and important contributions to American culture continues through her writing, folklore and anthropological work. However, Hurston’s journey into becoming a celebrated author and anthropologist is one of resilience, bravery and barrier-breaking, much of which she was inspired to do while spending time in Washington, D.C.
Before she made it to the nation’s capital, Hurston was born in Notasulga, Alabama, on Jan. 7, 1891, but Eatonville, Florida, where her family moved while Hurston was a toddler, was always her home. The town was the first all-Black incorporated municipality in the history of the United States.
The author’s childhood environment clearly illustrated Black people as leaders, educators, and storytellers. Her own father, John Hurston, served as mayor three different times and helped write some of the town’s laws that still exist today.
Her mother, Lucy Hurston, was a Sunday school teacher, who died when Hurston was only 13. The loss of her mother was a significant marker in the writer’s life journey. In fact, Hurston would not return to finish high school until she was 26; to qualify for free public schooling, she would present herself as 16 and continue to pose as 10 years younger for the rest of her life.
Her literary journey, or her first “jump at de sun,” as her late mother encouraged, was at Howard University in 1919. Hurston did not believe she could make it to the university, “the capstone of Negro education in the world,” as she called it. But once she set foot on campus, she would leave a lasting impression.
“It was here at Howard when there was rebirth in a new era of her life, where she began becoming the Zora we know today,” said Rae Chesny, director of the Zora Neale Hurston Trust.
Hurston began her trailblazing work in the co-founding of the student newspaper The Hilltop in 1924, alongside anthropologist Eugene King. Her legacy at Howard and The Hilltop continues to this day. As part of the publication’s centennial celebration on Feb. 3, Hurston was honored as an inaugural member of the Hilltop Hall of Fame.
The talented writer published her first story, “John Redding Goes to Sea”, in Stylus, Howard’s literary society’s magazine in 1921.
Her barrier-breaking in educational environments didn’t stop in D.C. She continued writing, and began pursuing a degree in anthropology at Barnard College. In 1928, She would become the first Black person to graduate from the liberal arts college in New York.
Collecting Cultural Artifacts and Narratives, Sharing Stories with the World
Hurston’s powerful presence transcended academia, and she made her way into the same rooms with Black thought leaders like W.E.B Du Bois and poet Langston Hughes.
Gaining recognition in the first half of the 20th century, Hurston would become the most prolific and successful Black woman writer during the Harlem Renaissance.
“Zora Neale Hurston became an acclaimed novelist, writer, [and] trained anthropologist, who pioneered the collection of cultural artifacts of Black people, not only around the very racist American South, but around the world,” Chesney explained.
Curiosity drove Hurston’s work.
“It’s fitting that as a social scientist, Zora, who was concerned with questions, inquiry and resolution of problems was a journalist, anthropologist, and contributor to understanding the social world around her,” said Lucy Anne Hurston, Hurston’s niece.
In her anthropological work, Hurston returned to Florida to study Black folklore that lived in the minds of the elders of the South. Her approach made her a revolutionary social scientist, and one of the first to look deeply at African American trance activities and Southern folktales.
In 1927, she wrote “Barracoon: The Story of the Last “Black Cargo’” about Kossala, the final survivor of the last known ship ever to bring enslaved humans from Africa to the U.S. Her interviews revealed Kossala’s memories of home and the passage to America.
Rejected by publishers during her lifetime, excerpts of “Barracoon” weren’t published until the 2003 biography “Wrapped in Rainbows: The Life of Zora Neale Hurston,” by Valerie Boyd, and the full book wasn’t published until 2018.
In 1937, she wrote her masterwork, “Their Eyes Were Watching God”, in seven weeks. The celebrated novel continues to be assigned and studied by doctoral scholars and high schoolers alike.
Hurston died in the St. Lucie County Welfare Home after suffering hypertensive heart disease in 1960. Despite her significant contributions to America’s literary canon, she would lay forgotten in an unmarked grave in Fort Pierce, Florida.
Thirteen years later, a young Alice Walker would come posing as her niece, hoping to learn more about the writer, to whom she felt connected. She finally marked Hurston’s grave, naming her “A Genius of the South.”
Hurston’s work inspired Walker, Toni Morrison, and generations of Black women writers who wanted to remember and create a world that honored Black people and their memory, culture, and storytelling. In 1975, Walker published “Searching for Zora” in the Ms. Magazine.
“There’s still more to discover of Zora and all the good influence that she had in the world,” Hurston’s niece told The Informer.