Zora Neale Hurston, Writer, Anthropologist, Folklorist, Playwright (January 7, 1891 – January 28, 1960)
Zora Neale Hurston — the legendary anthropologist, folklorist, playwright, traveler, and most-notable woman writer of the Harlem Renaissance — was the daughter of the mayor of Eatonville, Fla., the first Black incorporated municipality in the United States.
While the early death of her mother would affect her profoundly, the resourceful Hurston would go on to study under Howard University’s intellectual Alain Locke. She became the first African-American female to graduate from Barnard College and emerged as a celebrated author during the Harlem Renaissance.
Her books, including “Mules and Men (1935),“ “Their Eyes Were Watching God (1937),” “Moses, Man of the Mountain (1939),” “Dust Tracks on a Road (1942),” and others contain some of the most fascinating views of African American life during these periods…whether biographical, anthropological, spiritual, or fictional, as her writings cover all of these.
The outspoken and supremely self-reliant and individualistic personality traits that caused Hurston to fall out of favor among the Black intellectuals of her time, left behind by the worlds of art, literature and even folklorist anthropology, landed her in a forgotten space for many years, before her accomplishments were unearthed decades later. It was not until the 1980s that her works began to be heralded again.
Hurston died penniless in 1960 at the age of 69 and was buried in an unmarked grave. Her genius was forgotten about in the last decade of her life, her books out of print. But today, Hurston holds a near-mythic stature.
The film version of “Their Eyes Were Watching God,” is known to many, while the biographical film “Jump at the Sun,” has introduced her life story to millions.
Today’s Afrofuturism movement has called found its “mother” in Hurston, as revealed in the 2020 31st Annual Zora Neale Hurston Festival, held annually in Eatonville. Today, Hurston is revered as a seminal Black artist whose journey was marked by great love, society embrace, and career fortune — mixed with equal doses of heartbreak, loneliness, and poverty.
Her intense curiosity, desire to examine roads less traveled, and insistence on pursuing her intellectual and emotional yearnings — alone and unhampered by the constraints of others — led her to follow a lone-wolf path through life. You can learn more about her at https://www.zoranealehurston.com.
