Zora Neale Hurston - an Audio Bio by Tonya Matthews

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#HerStory 48: Zora Neale Hurston by Tonya Matthews

Zora Neale Hurston

Born January 7, 1891
Notasulga, Alabama, United States

Died January 28, 1960 (aged 69)
Fort Pierce, Florida, United States

Occupation Folklorist, anthropologist, novelist, short story writer



Hurston was the fifth of eight children of John Hurston and Lucy Ann

Hurston (née Potts). Her father was a Baptist preacher, tenant farmer,

and carpenter, and her mother was a school teacher. She was born in

Notasulga, Alabama, on January 7, 1891, where her father grew up and

her grandfather was the preacher of a Baptist church. Her family moved

to Eatonville, Florida, one of the first all-black towns to be

incorporated in the United States, when she was three. Hurston said she

always felt that Eatonville was "home" to her and sometimes claimed it

as her birthplace.

Anthropological and folkloric fieldwork

Hurston traveled extensively in the Caribbean and the American South

and immersed herself in local cultural practices to conduct her

anthropological research. Her work in the South, sponsored from 1928 to

1932 by Charlotte Osgood Mason,[20] a wealthy philanthropist, produced

Mules and Men in 1935, often regarded as a folklore classic, as well as

the base material for novels like Jonah's Gourd Vine published in 1934.

In 1936 and 1937, she traveled to Jamaica and to Haiti with support

from the Guggenheim Foundation from which her anthropological work Tell

My Horse published in 1938 emerged.

She also lived in Honduras, at the north coastal town of Puerto Cortés

from October 1947 to February 1948. Her trip to Central America was

apparently occasioned by the idea of locating either Mayan ruins or

vestiges of some other as yet undiscovered civilization. While in

Puerto Cortés, she wrote much of Seraph on the Suwanee, a book which

had nothing to do with Honduras. Hurston expressed interest in the

polyethnic nature of the population in the region (many of whom, such

as the Miskito Zambu and Garifuna were in fact of partial African

ancestry).

In 1948, Hurston was falsely accused of molesting a ten-year-old boy;

although the case was dismissed after Hurston presented evidence that

she was in Honduras when the crime supposedly occurred in the U.S., her

personal life was seriously disrupted by the scandal.

A 1935 photograph of the most famous daughter of Eatonville, Fla.,
the writer Zora Neale Hurston, by Alan Lomax.