Folklorist and writer, Zora Neale Hurston, was a significant novelist of the Harlem Renaissance, well known for her novel "Their Eyes Were Watching God". Zora Neale Hurston was born on January 7, 1891 in Notasulga, Alabama. She grew up in the all-Black town of Eatonville, Florida. Eatonville, was one of the first self-governing all-Black municipalities in the United States. The only White people, she saw were the ones driving through on their way to Orlando. After her father had remarried following her mother's death, her seven brothers and sisters were separated, moving in with different relatives.
At 16 she joined a touring Gilbert & Sullivan theatre company, working for about a year and a half as a maid to the lead singer. She traveled the country, learned about theater, and continued her studies by borrowing books from the performers. When she left that job, Hurston went to Baltimore, Maryland, and continued her education at Morgan Academy now known as Morgan State University. She attended Howard University from 1921 to 1924. Life at Howard was about more than attending class. Zora was an active participant in campus life.
With limited employment opportunities, Hurston worked as a waitress and manicurist, barely supporting herself on the average income of twelve to fifteen dollars a week at Howard. However, in spite of the economic hardships, these were happy and challenging years for Hurston. She also began to write, publishing a story in the magazine of the school's literary society. Hurston submitted her first story, "John Redding Goes to Sea," in 1921 to The Stylus, Howard University's literary club. At Howard, she became part of an exclusive literary group that included prolific writer and renowned educator Dr. Alain Locke.
After her story, "Drenched in Light," was submitted to The Stylus, she sent it to Charles S. Johnson in New York City. As editor of Opportunity, he was looking for young writers, was impressed, and published it. Johnson also published another of Hurston's stories, "Spunk," and these two appearances in print fueled her desire to go to New York City and try her luck as a writer. Zora was thrown into the heart of the Harlem Renaissance. In 1925 she left Howard University and moved to Harlem. Drawn by the circle of creative Black artists she began writing fiction. The Negro Renaissance occurred during the 1920s, with Harlem known as its "culture capital," according to James Weldon Johnson.
Since the community of Harlem in New York City became recognized as the center of the Negro Renaissance Movement, many refer to it also as the Harlem Renaissance Movement. Such well-known figures as, Claude McKay, Fenton Johnson, Marita Odette Bonner and Wallace Thurman flourished during the Harlem Renaissance. In New York, Hurston made friends easily, and it wasn't long before she was part of literary circles that included Margaret Walker, Arna Bontemps, Aaron Douglas, and Jean Toomer. Hurston befriended the likes of Langston Hughes and Countee Cullen, among several others, with whom she launched a short-lived literary magazine, Fire!!
This literary movement became the center of the Harlem Renaissance. High-spirited, outgoing, and witty, she became famous for her storytelling talents. Her involvement with these writers and artists, as well as editors and publishers in the Harlem Renaissance movement, quickly earned her a reputation as an entertaining storyteller. Zora’s creative efforts mirrored her academic studies. She embodied the Harlem Renaissance. She was creative, educated, energetic, and committed to celebrating Black culture.
That network helped her earn a scholarship to Barnard College (1925) of, Columbia University in New York City. There, she received her BA in anthropology in 1928 studying under under famous anthropologist Franz Boas. Boas encouraged Zora to pursue her interest in African American culture and folklore. Her early fieldwork in Harlem opened doors to travel. She was 37 years old. Hurston also collaborated with Margaret Mead and Ruth Benedict in various anthropological works. While studying at Barnard College, Hurston also worked as a secretary for Fannie Hurst, a novelist. (Hurst, later in 1933 wrote "Imitation of Life", about a Black woman passing as White).
She emerged from Barnard a part-time writer and a full-time anthropologist, and Dr. Boas found grant money to support his student while she spent four years in the field gathering folklore. This collection of folklore provided models or precedents for the work she was doing, and she made mistakes in both her methods and her written reports. She also conducted field studies in folklore among Blacks in the South. Her trips were funded by folklorist Charlotte Osgood Mason, a White philanthropist, who was a patron to both Hurston and Langston Hughes. Hurston worked as an investigator for Dr. Carter G. Woodson and the Association for the Study of Negro Life and History (ASNLH) in 1927.
One task from Woodson was to to interview the last known living man to be born in Africa and enslaved in America. While in Alabama, Zora ran into friend and Harlem Renaissance luminary Langston Hughes. Langston and Zora traveled back to New York together, stopping at several cities along the way. They visited the Tuskegee Institute, which was founded by Booker T. Washington. Then, they took a detour to Macon, Georgia, to see Bessie Smith, the “Empress of the Blues,” perform. That evening, they ran into her in their hotel and spent the evening swapping stories of life on the road.
Hurston received her B.A. in 1928. After college, when Hurston began working as an ethnologist, she combined fiction and her knowledge of culture. In 1930 Hurston collaborated with Hughes on a play (never finished) titled Mule Bone: A Comedy of Negro Life in Three Acts. The next year Hurston had an unfortunate misunderstanding with Langston Hughes over the rights and authorship of Mule Bone, a play that they had hoped would be a collaborative effort. The bitter dispute severed their friendship. Years later, scholars would argue that the play was a true collaboration by two great talents of the Harlem Renaissance.
She published her first novel, Jonah’s Gourd Vine, in 1934. From 1936 to 1937, she undertook an expedition to Jamaica and Haiti, paid for the by Guggenheim Foundation, and investigated and took part in Voodoo practices, rituals, and beliefs. Her firsthand account of the mysteries of Voodoo, “Tell My Horse”, was published in 1938. Upon receiving a Guggenheim fellowship, Hurston traveled to Haiti and wrote what would become her most famous work "Their Eyes Were Watching God" (1937). In both books, Zora explored the lives of Black Americans in the South. "Their Eyes Were Watching God" was particularly important because it provided insight into the experiences of Southern Black women.
The novel tells the story of Janie Mae Crawford, who learns the value of self-reliance through multiple marriages and tragedy. She relied on her research to incorporate local dialects and folklore into the novel. Her hope was to create a socially and emotionally realistic depiction of life in her home state of Florida. The novel was controversial because it didn't fit easily into stereotypes of Black stories. She was criticized within the Black community for taking funds from Whites to support her writing. Hurston wrote about themes "too Black" to appeal to many Whites. Hurston's popularity waned. Her last book "Seraph on the Suwanee", was published in 1948, and it was far from successful.
"Seraph on the Suwanee", was notable principally for its focus on White characters. It explores images of "white trash" women. She spent her last years as a freelance writer for newspapers and magazines. In 1952, 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. In 1957, she moved to Fort Pierce, Florida where she took various positions including substitute teaching. As the Black civil rights movement expanded in the United States, new generations of activists questioned her work. Her publications were often dismissed as too traditional and narrow by new generations of Black activists.