But it was the rest of the world that the child hungered for. Reverend Hurston ’s words to his daughter were cautionary: the rest of the world was not like Eatonville. ”Ī carpenter, three-term mayor, and moderator of the South Florida Baptist Association, Zora ’s father, Reverend John Hurston, was a well-respected man and -according to wisdom gathered on Joe Clarke ’s porch -the strongest and bravest man in the community. “The white folks were not going to stand for it. “It did not do for Negroes to have too much spirit, ” he counseled, as related in Zora ’s autobiography. ’ We might not land on the sun, but at least we would get off the ground. ![]() As Zora wrote in her autobiography, Dust Tracks on a Road : “Mama exhorted her children at every opportunity to ‘jump at the sun. Lucy Ann Hurston, a former country school teacher, was delighted with her daughter ’s spiritedness. The place was overrun with boisterous, barefoot children, and the young Zora was probably the loudest of them all. The Hurstons built a comfortable home on five acres of lush land dotted with tropical fruit trees. Eatonville was a nurturing environment that provided a black child with rich traditions and a pride and joy in being black. The porch became a stage as neighbors sat around on milk crates skillfully transforming simple gossip into folktales. In her folklore classic Mules and Men, Hurston describes Eatonville as “a city of five lakes, three croquet courts, three hundred brown skins, three hundred good swimmers, plenty guavas, two schools, and no jail house, ” as well as the home of Joe Clarke ’s store porch. Eatonville was incorporated in 1886 as the first self-governed, all-black city in America. One of eight children, Hurston was born in the idyllic setting of a town in central Florida named Eatonville. Hurston was a complex artist whose persona ranged from charming and outrageous to fragile and inconsistent, but she always remained a driven and brilliant talent. And she did so with a vengeance by becoming the most published black female author in her time and arguably the most important collector of African-American folklore ever. Gildersleeve Professor Alice Walker, drew over 1,000 participants to Barnard College.Ī founder of modern anthropology, Boas discredited theories of racial superiority.Īrchival treasures and interviews tell the story of one of the world's most famous and influential neighborhoods.Ĭolumbia's history, as seen by those who have studied, taught, and worked here.Ĭolumbians have changed the world and how we see it.Zora Neale Hurston managed to avoid many of the restraints placed upon women, blacks, and specifically black artists by American society during the first half of the twentieth century. ![]() Read more about Hurston in the Columbia Encyclopedia.Ī conference on Hurston's legacy, featuring a keynote lecture by Fall 2003 Virginia C. At Columbia, the Zora Neale Hurston Professorship of English honors her life and work. She left New York to conduct research in Florida and in Haiti, her field work resulting in the folklore collections Mules and Men (1935) and Tell My Horse (1938). After graduation at the age of 37, Hurston later pursued graduate work at Columbia with renowned anthropologist Franz Boas. Her admission was secured and expenses paid by Barnard cofounder and longtime trustee, Annie Nathan Meyer. ![]() Hurston also collaborated with Langston Hughes on the 1931 play Mule Bone, which was never performed during their lifetimes due to disagreements between them over authorship.Ī published short story writer by the time she came to New York in 1925, Hurston studied anthropology at Barnard, where she was the college's first African-American student. Her reputation was resuscitated after Alice Walker's 1975 essay, "In Search of Zora Neale Hurston," led to rediscovery of novels such as Jonah's Gourd Vine (1934) and Their Eyes Were Watching God (1937). She became one of the most widely read authors of the Harlem Renaissance but died penniless and forgotten, her eight books long out of print. Hurston combined literature with anthropology, employing indigenous dialects to tell the stories of people in her native rural Florida and in the Caribbean. "No matter how far a person can go the horizon is still way beyond you."
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