02/16/2021
In honor of Black History Month...
Today, we shine a light on the legacy of award-winning author Zora Neale Hurston (Their Eyes Were Watching God).
On January 7, 1891, Zora Neale Hurston was born in the tiny town of Notasulga, Alabama. She was the fifth of eight children in the Hurston household. Her father John was a carpenter, a sharecropper, and a Baptist preacher; her mother Lucy, a former schoolteacher. Within a year of Zora's birth, the family moved to Eatonville, Florida. Eatonville was the first incorporated black municipality in the United States.
In 1904, thirteen-year-old Zora was devastated by the death of her mother. Later that same year, her father removed her from school and sent her to care for her brother's children. A rambunctious and restless teenager, Zora was eager to leave the responsibility of her brother's household. She became a member of a traveling theater at the age of sixteen, and subsequently began domestic work in a white household. The woman for whom Zora worked bought her her first book and arranged for her to attend high school at Morgan Academy (now known as Morgan State University) in Baltimore. She graduated in June 1918.
She later attended Howard University. Although she spent nearly four years at Howard, she graduated with only a two-year Associates degree. Perhaps this is explained by the fact that Zora spent most of her time at Howard writing.
In 1925, as the Harlem Renaissance was building steam, Hurston headed to New York City. By the1930s and early 1940s she was at the peak of her literary career. Although Zora completed four novels and more than 50 published short stories, plays, and essays, she is best known for her 1937 novel Their Eyes Were Watching God.
She is remembered as a phenomenal author and intellectual, deeply devoted to her craft.
A Queen salute to Zora Neale Hurston!
