Zora Neale Hurston: A Journey Through Education, Anthropology, and Literary Legacy
Zora Neale Hurston, a prominent figure of the Harlem Renaissance, left an indelible mark on American literature and anthropology. Her journey, marked by academic pursuits, folkloric research, and literary achievements, showcases her unwavering dedication to preserving and celebrating Black culture. This article explores Hurston's educational background, her contributions to anthropology, and her enduring literary legacy.
Early Life and Education: From Eatonville to Howard University
Born on January 7, 1891, in Notasulga, Alabama, Zora Neale Hurston moved with her family to Eatonville, Florida, at a young age. Eatonville, established in 1887, was the first incorporated all-Black town in the United States. Growing up in this culturally rich environment profoundly shaped Hurston's perspective and later influenced her work. She attended school in Eatonville until the age of 13.
The death of her mother in 1904 marked a turning point in Hurston's life. After Lucy Hurston’s death, Zora’s father remarried quickly and seemed to have little time or money for his children. "That hour began my wanderings," she later wrote. "Not so much in geography, but in time. Then not so much in time as in spirit." After her mother's death in 1904, Hurston's home life became increasingly difficult, and at 16, she joined a traveling theatrical company.
In 1917, she turned up in Baltimore; by then, she was 26 years old and still hadn’t finished high school. Needing to present herself as a teenager to qualify for free public schooling, she lopped 10 years off her life-giving her age as 16 and the year of her birth as 1901. Once gone, those years were never restored: From that moment forward, Hurston would always present herself as at least 10 years younger than she actually was.
In 1918, Hurston began her studies at Howard University, a historically black college in Washington, D.C. According to the Zora Neale Hurston Trust, Hurston was a student at Howard University from 1919 to 1924, where she majored in English and received her associates degree in 1920. While at Howard, she joined a literary club sponsored by professors Alain Locke and Montgomery Gregory, and would go on to publish her first story “John Redding Goes to Sea,” along with the poem “O Night,” in the university’s literary journal Stylus. During her time as a Howard student, Hurston, alongside Louis Eugene King (B.S. ’24), founded The Hilltop, the university’s student newspaper and the oldest Black collegiate paper in the nation. The pair published the first issue of The Hilltop Jan. To fund her education at Howard, Hurston took on several service jobs, one of which included being a manicurist in 1919 at a Black-owned barbershop in D.C. Despite the shop’s policy of only serving white patrons, Hurston admired the shop’s owner, entrepreneur George Robinson, who, she said, “would give any Howard University student a job in his shops if they could qualify,” wrote Valerie Boyd in the article “Zora Neale Hurston: The Howard University Years,” published in the Journal of Blacks in Higher Education. According to Boyd, because Hurston went unnoticed in the barbershop, the “men of power talked freely around her - about backstairs maneuvering at the White House, the inner workings of Congress, about secret romantic liaisons.” Hurston attended Howard from 1919 to 1923 - where she majored in English, published poetry, and worked to put herself through school - but did not complete her undergraduate requirements due to illness and lack of funds. By 1924, she decided that she was ready for a change. She left school and devoted her attention to writing and publishing short stories in various magazines.
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Barnard College: A Pivotal Chapter
By 1924, she decided that she was ready for a change. She left school and devoted her attention to writing and publishing short stories in various magazines. In January, 1925, with the encouragement of sociologist Charles S. Johnson, who published her stories in Opportunity: A Journal of Negro Life, Hurston moved to New York City. It was an exciting time because black writers and artists were flocking to the city to be part of the Harlem Renaissance, the black literary and cultural movement of the time. Hurston’s intelligence, charm, and wit ensured her popularity. Her early stories, which prefigured her later work, featured the rural African American dialect of central Florida and its rich folklore. For Locke, Hurston’s southern background provided the connection to the black folk heritage that he considered essential for the literature of the movement. Locke published one of her stories in The New Negro (1925) and Hurston also won second prize in a literary contest sponsored by Opportunity.
Once in the City, at Opportunity’s awards dinner - where Hurston’s short stories and play won second place behind Langston Hughes’s work - Hurston met Annie Nathan Meyer, a co-founder of Barnard College. Meyer was extremely supportive of Hurston and offered her admission to the College. In the fall of 1925, Hurston officially enrolled at Barnard, feeling “highly privileged and determined to make the most of it. I did not resolve to be a grind, however, to show the white folks I had brains. I took it for granted that they knew that. Else, why was I at Barnard? Not everyone who cries, ‘Lord!
In September, 1925, Hurston began studying at Barnard College on a scholarship. She earned a bachelor’s degree in 1928. While at the university, she came to the attention of the noted anthropologist Franz Boas and conducted fieldwork for him in Harlem. While at Barnard, she came to the attention of the noted anthropologist Franz Boas and conducted fieldwork for him in Harlem. Living in Harlem in the 1920s, Hurston befriended writers including Langston Hughes and Countee Cullen. Her apartment, according to some accounts, was a popular spot for social gatherings.
Already an award-winning writer who’d had great success in Harlem, Hurston struggled to fit in on Barnard’s elite, overwhelmingly white campus. “For instance at Barnard. ‘Beside the waters of the Hudson’ I feel my race. Among the thousand white persons, I am a dark rock surged upon, and overswept, but through it all, I remain myself. As at Howard, Hurston was never solely a student at Barnard but also engaged in numerous other activities. For just over a month, she acted as personal secretary to one of the most popular and highest-paid writers of her time, Fannie Hurst, who was greatly impressed by Hurston’s short story “Spunk.” Hurston became Hurst’s good friend and was deeply influenced by her throughout their years of friendship. Another extremely important influence in Hurston’s life during this period was Franz Boas, her professor in the majority of the anthropology classes she took at Barnard and Columbia.
Life at Barnard had its ups and downs, as Hurston was not permitted to reside in the dormitories and, early on, was laughed at by classmates whenever she recited French. Though Hurston had won an academic scholarship in 1926, Dean Gildersleeve later admitted that she had reservations about Hurston’s ability to succeed, writing to Meyer, “I wonder if we really ought to encourage her to remain in college. A couple of months later, possibly sensing the dean’s discouragement, Hurston wrote to her friend Countee Cullen, “The regular grind at Barnard is beginning to drive me lopsided.
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On February 29, 1928, Hurston received her undergraduate degree, becoming the first African American student known to have graduated from Barnard and to become the first trained Black anthropologist. She graduated with a major in English (not anthropology, as is often reported) and a minor in geology.
Graduate Studies and Anthropological Research
After graduating from Barnard, Hurston spent two years as a graduate student in anthropology, working with Boas at Columbia University. She also worked with Ruth Benedict and fellow anthropology student Margaret Mead. While at the university, she came to the attention of the noted anthropologist Franz Boas and conducted fieldwork for him in Harlem. Encouraged by Boas to record African American folktales and customs, Hurston traveled around Alabama and Florida gathering material. She sought sponsorship from a white patron, the wealthy socialite Charlotte Osgood Mason, who supported other Harlem Renaissance figures, including the writer Langston Hughes. In exchange for financial support, Hurston was obligated to sign a contract acknowledging her patron’s ownership of her research and editorial control over its publication. The songs, customs, and folktales that she collected would later be published in Mules and Men (1935).
Alain Locke recommended Hurston to Charlotte Osgood Mason, a philanthropist and literary patron who had supported Locke and other African-American authors, such as Langston Hughes; however, she also tried to direct their work. Mason became interested in Hurston's work and supported her travel in the South for research from 1927 to 1932 with a stipend of $200 per month. In return, she wanted Hurston to give her all the material she collected about Negro music, folklore, literature, hoodoo, and other forms of culture. At the same time, Hurston needed to satisfy Boas as her academic adviser.
After graduating from Barnard, Hurston spent two years as a graduate student in anthropology, working with Boas at Columbia University. In 1934, Hurston received a fellowship to study for a doctorate in anthropology at Columbia University. She found the terms of the fellowship restrictive and never completed the graduate degree, but she was later awarded two Guggenheim field research fellowships to study folk culture in Haiti and Jamaica.
Fieldwork and Literary Contributions
After graduating from Barnard, Hurston spent two years as a graduate student in anthropology, working with Boas at Columbia University. She returned to the South, and in 1931 she traveled primarily in Florida to gather experience and knowledge of African American folklore. She traveled extensively in the Caribbean and the American South and immersed herself in local cultural practices to conduct her anthropological research. Based on her work in the South, sponsored from 1928 to 1932 by Charlotte Osgood Mason, a wealthy philanthropist, Hurston wrote Mules and Men in 1935.
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In the years following this research, she also worked as a drama instructor at Bethune-Cookman College in Florida. In 1934, Hurston established a school of dramatic arts "based on pure Negro expression" at Bethune-Cookman College, a historically black college in Daytona Beach, Florida later to be known as Bethune-Cookman University. In 1935, Hurston traveled to Georgia and Florida with Alan Lomax and Mary Elizabeth Barnicle for research on African-American song traditions and their relationship to slave and African antecedent music. In 1936 and 1937, Hurston traveled to Jamaica and Haiti for research, with support from the Guggenheim Foundation. She drew from this research for Tell My Horse (1938), a genre-defying book that mixes anthropology, folklore, and personal narrative.
In 1934, Hurston published her first novel, Jonah’s Gourd Vine. The story takes place in a small, all-Black Florida town, much like her hometown of Eatonville, and draws heavily on the anthropological and folkloric research that had occupied Hurston during the four previous years of her life. Her second book, Mules and Men (1935), also focuses on the African American culture in which she had always been immersed.
Hurston wrote an autobiography, Dust Tracks on a Road, that was published in 1942. The most commercially successful of her books, it was less an accurate reflection of her life than the public image she wished to present. The book won an award and Hurston was deluged with requests for magazine articles. When these began to appear in The Saturday Evening Post, The Negro Digest, and Reader’s Digest, her often controversial views antagonized sections of the black community.
Her literary oeuvre included authoring several books - such as her most known work, “Their Eyes Were Watching God” (1937) - and penning more than 50 short stories, plays, and essays. By 1935, Hurston-who’d graduated from Barnard College in 1928-had published several short stories and articles, as well as a novel (Jonah’s Gourd Vine) and a well-received collection of black Southern folklore (Mules and Men). But the late 1930s and early ’40s marked the real zenith of her career. She published her masterwork, Their Eyes Were Watching God, in 1937; Tell My Horse, her study of Caribbean Voodoo practices, in 1938; and another masterful novel, Moses, Man of the Mountain, in 1939. When her autobiography, Dust Tracks on a Road, was published in 1942, Hurston finally received the well-earned acclaim that had long eluded her. That year, she was profiled in Who’s Who in America, Current Biography and Twentieth Century Authors. She went on to publish another novel, Seraph on the Suwanee, in 1948. Her last book, Seraph on the Suwanee, a novel, appeared in 1948.
Later Career and Hardships
Despite the promise of her career and her recognition as a scholar and as a writer, Hurston received little financial reward from her work. Still, Hurston never received the financial rewards she deserved. (The largest royalty she ever earned from any of her books was $943.75.) She moved around the country, taking a variety of jobs to support herself.
During her last decade, Hurston worked as a freelance writer for magazines and newspapers. Taking jobs where she could find them, Hurston worked occasionally as a substitute teacher. At age 60, Hurston had to fight "to make ends meet" with the help of public assistance. During a period of financial and medical difficulties, Hurston was forced to enter St. Lucie County Welfare Home, where she had a stroke. She died of hypertensive heart disease on January 28, 1960, and was buried at the Garden of Heavenly Rest in Fort Pierce, Florida.
Rediscovery and Enduring Legacy
Forgotten by the time of her death in 1960, Zora Neale Hurston was rediscovered by numerous Black authors in the late 20th century as reclaimed as an important African American writer. Despite her early promise, by the time of her death in 1960 Hurston was little remembered by the general reading public, but there was a resurgence of interest in her work in the late 20th century. That summer, a young writer named Alice Walker traveled to Fort Pierce to place a marker on the grave of the author who had so inspired her own work. Walker found the Garden of Heavenly Rest, a segregated cemetery at the dead end of North 17th Street, abandoned and overgrown with yellow-flowered weeds.
That year, she was profiled in Who’s Who in America, Current Biography and Twentieth Century Authors. She went on to publish another novel, Seraph on the Suwanee, in 1948. That summer, a young writer named Alice Walker traveled to Fort Pierce to place a marker on the grave of the author who had so inspired her own work. Walker found the Garden of Heavenly Rest, a segregated cemetery at the dead end of North 17th Street, abandoned and overgrown with yellow-flowered weeds.
Walker purchased a headstone for Hurston and had it engraved with “A Genius of the South.” A Literary Legend Walker’s article sparked a renewed interest in Hurston’s work. Today, Hurston’s legacy lives on through her publications, the artists who were influenced by her, and the entities named after her, such as the annual Zora Awards (formally the Legacy Awards) presented by the Zora Neale Hurston/Richard Wright Foundation. Her legacy and literary genius reemerged into the public consciousness nearly two decades after her death when writer Alice Walker wrote the Ms. magazine article “In Search of Zora Neale Hurston” in 1975. The article chronicled Walker’s pilgrimage to Eatonville, Florida, where Hurston grew up, in search of the people who knew the writer and her burial site. She found that Hurston’s final resting place was an unmarked grave in Fort Pierce, Florida, reflective of just how forgotten the literary titan was at the time.
Walker purchased a headstone for Hurston and had it engraved with “A Genius of the South.” A Literary Legend Walker’s article sparked a renewed interest in Hurston’s work. Today, Hurston’s legacy lives on through her publications, the artists who were influenced by her, and the entities named after her, such as the annual Zora Awards (formally the Legacy Awards) presented by the Zora Neale Hurston/Richard Wright Foundation.
In addition to Mule Bone, several other collections of her work were published posthumously; these include Spunk: The Selected Stories (1985), The Complete Stories (1995), and Every Tongue Got to Confess (2001), a collection of folktales from the South. In 1995 the Library of America published a two-volume set of Hurston’s work in its series. In addition, Hurston’s Barracoon: The Story of the Last “Black Cargo” was released in 2018. Although completed in 1931, this nonfiction work was originally rejected by publishers because of its use of vernacular. It tells the story of Cudjo Lewis, who was believed to be the last survivor of the final ship that brought enslaved Africans to the United States. Ibram X.
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