Author, folklorist, and anthropologist, Zora Neale Hurston, was born in Notasulga, Alabama, on this date in 1897. Best knwon for her novels and articles, Hurston grew up in Eatonville, one of the oldest incorporated African American municipalities in the U.S. Many of her literary works use Eatonville as a backdrop. Hurston was considered part of the Harlem Renaissance, a cultural movement centered in Harlem, New York, that promoted African American expression through the arts and humanities. She graduated from both Howard University and Barnard College in the 1920s. Hurston also traveled extensively throughout the American South and the Caribbean, collecting folklore and songs which she helped record for the Federal Writers Project, a New Deal initiative, during the 1930s. Among her most famous literary works was “Their Eyes Were Watching God,” published in 1937. Set in rural central and south Florida during the early twentieth century, the story follows a young African American woman’s journey through marriage, hardship, and triumph in the Jim Crow-era South. Although Hurston traveled all over the world, she lived in Florida on and off for most of her life. She died in Fort Pierce in 1960 and is buried in the Garden of Heavenly Rest Cemetery.
Every year in January/February, Hurston’s life and works are celebrated in her home town of Eatonville at the Zora Neale Hurston Festival of the Arts and Humanities.
~Florida Historical Society