Zora Neale Hurston was born on January 7th of 1891. She was born in Notasulga, Alabama. The actual birth place of Hurston was debated because in her autobiography Dusty Tracks on a Road, she stated that she was born in Eatonville, Florida. Many people think that she simply took some creative license with her actual place of birth. Hurston’s parents were both former slaves. Her mother died when she was very young and her father was a pastor. Hurston lived with many family members in her youth due to her mother’s death.
As she got older, she had dreams of getting an education and a good paying job. To do this, she started making money as a maid for an actress in a Gilbert and Sullivan group. She used this money to get an associate at Howard University. She took a liking to literature at a young age and published her first work in the newspaper at her university. She then moved to NYC to the Harlem neighborhood. There, she became vital to the area’s art community. In Harlem, Hurston became good friends with Langston Hughes and Countee Cullen. Many accounts say that her apartment was a very well-known social spot for many people. During her time in Harlem, she had some success in literature with short-stories and playwriting. Hurston got scholarships to Barnard College where she studied anthropology. She returned to Florida in 1927 and collected black folk tales. She then published a series called Mules and Men. She wrote many articles for newspapers and magazines, too. She worked on a play with Hughes called Mule-Bone: A Comedy of Negro Life as well as writing many other plays. Her first novel in 1934 and it was called Jonah’s Gourd Vine. She spent a year in Jamaica doing anthropological research. She published her autobiography in 1942 called Dust Tracks on a Road. This is a very famous work. Her most famous book, though, is Their Eyes Were Watching God. A book about a search for significance.
In January of 1960, she died. Her legacy lives on strongly through her works of literature, mostly in the African-American category. Before her death she was charged of molesting a 10-year-old boy, even though she could prove herself innocent because she was out of the country. This accusation hurt her legacy a lot and caused her to die poor and alone. It took almost a decade after her death for her works to really pick up popularity.
By Hunter Scott
Their Eyes Were Watching God 