- Zora Neale Hurston (1901?-1960) grew up in Eatonville, Fla., where she was surrounded by Afro-American culture in this self-governing all-Black town. Hurston spent much of her life seeking a form of expression that could accommodate her experience in the rural Black South, her anthropological studies at Barnard, and the artistic revolt of the Harlem Renaissance. One of her novels, Their Eyes Were Watching God, brought to perfection the creative artist and the folklorist. Hurston's adventuresome spirit spurred her to Haiti to study hoodoo; to look for a lost civilization in Honduras; to take her houseboat from Florida on a 1,500-mile voyage to N.Y., and made her a central figure in the Harlem Renaissance. Zora's death was tragic, but not because Zora was a tragic woman—on the contrary—but because she suffered the effects of a white, male-dominated society that didn't support Blacks, women, or artists, she died in poverty and obscurity in a Florida State nursing home. Still writing and with her visions unfulfilled, she would have to send an unsolicited manuscript to a publisher in 1959, even though she was the most published Black woman writer in America. But, as she said, "I shall wrassle me up a future or die trying." Zora's life and career have left us with a wealth of material on the Black folk community and a recent revival of her life and work has brought many of her books and other writings back into print.
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