Zora Neale Hurston was born in 1891 in a town in Alabama called Notasulga to an African-American father, initially a slave, who married up in social class to her mother. Since she was a little girl, Zora was a creative type. This creative tendency became more evident upon the death of her mother in 1904 when Zora was thirteen years old. After the last family reunion, she was forced to move to be with various family members in Florida. The years following her mother’s death were “haunted” to her, and not many records exist for the time period between 1904 and 1914, although the few records in existence do show that she moved to Jacksonville to live with her brother and sister where she had to begin work because she was told she was “a little colored girl,” and that was her place. She received little education during this time, but later, she indirectly pursued her love of drama by becoming the personal maid to a singer in a Gilbert and Sullivan troupe, although this job only lasted until 1916, the year Zora dealt with appendicitis. However, she went back to school and finally graduated in 1918 from Morgan Academy. Then, she attended Howard University where she earned her associate’s degree in 1920.
Four years after her graduation, in 1924, Zora submitted a short story, “Drenched in Light,” which focused on Eatonville, and it earned second prize in the annual Opportunity literary contest . A year later, in 1925, she relocated to Harlem. In addition to her move that year, her work was further recognized at the Opportunity contest, and she met Annie Nathan Meyer, one of the founders of Barnard College who later assisted Zora in being accepted into the school. Zora earned a scholarship to study here, and she studied anthropology with Franz Boaz. She graduated in 1928, and then from there, went to graduate school at Columbia University.
Charlotte Osgood Mason took an interest in Zora and funded her trips to record folklore in exchange for control over the use of the material. She went back to Florida to collect stories from her hometown . From there, she traveled to New Orleans to study the practice of Hoodoo. According to The Zora Neale Hurston Digital Archive, Hoodoo appealed to her because its rituals allowed women to participate in prominent roles. Unfortunately, however, Mason became too controlling over Zora, and Mason broke ties with her in 1931.
After this season of her life ended, she needed to make ends meet, so she created a folk musical entitled The Great Day, which was based on her memories of Eatonville. Although this play did not make it past one show, she wrote other plays and even collaborated with Langston Hughes on a play entitled Mule Bone: A Comedy of Negro Life. Unfortunately, they did not finish this collaboration.
In 1934, Zora published her first novel, Jonah’s Gourd Vine (Interestingly enough, she was evicted from her apartment the same day her novel was accepted), and later received the means to travel abroad again through a Guggenheim fellowship. 1937 was an important year for Zora, as she traveled through Haiti, where she published Their Eyes Were Watching God in just seven weeks, and from Haiti, she traveled to Jamaica for anthropological research. This was the year she immersed herself in her three passions: fiction, drama, and anthropology. In 1938, she published Tell My Horse.
The years following her return were a struggle, but upon her publication of her autobiography, Dust Tracks on a Road, she won an award for $1,000 and a feature on the cover of the Saturday Evening Post. Six years later, she published Seraph on the Suwanee. However, the years following her publication were dark. After being accused of molesting a child, being hired and fired at various jobs, struggling with money, and being evicted from her home, she endured a series of strokes in 1958 and passed away on January 28, 1960. Thankfully, her manuscripts were saved by Patrick Duval, and thirteen years after her death, her unmarked grave was located by Alice Walker, who placed a stone on it.