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Childhood: Zora Neale Hurston was born on January 07, 1891 Notasulga, Alabama. Both her parents were former slaves. Her father, Reverend John Hurston, was a Baptist minister, tenant farmer, and carpenter and her mother Luck Ann Potts Hurston was a teacher prior to her marriage. They had eight children together.
Reverend John Hurston moved the family to Eatonville, Florida, which was the first all-black town in the United Stated, when Zora was only three. Besides for serving as a pastor he also served three times as mayor of Eatonville. Lucy Hurston died with Zora was thirteen. Her father remarried, and the siblings were separated, moving in with different relatives.
Education: Hurston had little education as a child. As an adult working as a domestic in Baltimore her employer helped her enter Mogan Academy, a division of Mogan College, in 1917. When she enrolled she was twenty-six, but she gave her age as sixteen and her birth year as 1901. She graduated from Morgan in 1918 and entered Howard University in Washington D,C, In 1925, she moved to New York and transferred to Barnard College, an affiliate of Columbia University. Annie Nathan Meyer, founder of Barnard College, found a scholarship for Zora Neale Hurston. Hurston began her study of anthropology at Barnard under Franz Boaz, studying also with Ruth Benedict and Gladys Reichard. With the help of Boaz and Elsie Clews Parsons, Hurston was able to win a six-month grant she used to collect African American folklore. In 1925, Hurston was awarded her B.A,
Early Work: While Hurston was still at Howard University she has Alain Locke as a professor. He was not only a professor of philosophy but also an expert on black culture. His work was the inspiration Hurston's literary career, The Howard University Magazine, The Stylus, published her first short story "John Redding Goes to Sea," which was set in Eatonville. Hurston used the essense of Eatonville in many of her writings because she saw it as a 'perfect place' where American Blacks could live without he need to follow the norms of white society. During the years that followed continued writing for several different magazines. Opportunity, a black journal, published one of her short stories, "Spunk," which gained the attention of several poets who were involved in the Harlem Renaissance, including Langston Hughes and Countee Cullen. This was what led her to transfer to Barnard where she was amanuensis for the the novelist Fannie Hurst.
The Harlem Renaissance: The Harlem Renaissance was a period during which black artists moved away from the traditional dialectal works. The were no longer satisfied imitating white writers. It was an opportunity for blacks to explore black culture and express pride in their race through in all forms of artistic mediums. Huston's stories about Eatonville became a major force in shaping the Harlem Renaissance. Her work in anthropology was combined with her writing. She worked under the tutelage of Franz Boaz, a famous professor in the field. Additionally, she combined her studies in anthropology with her literary output. Studying under the famed professor of anthropology Franz Boas, she was allowed to do field research (1927-1932) in the south with a fellowship from the Association for the Study of Negro Life and History. This was a chance for her to collect folklore She also interviewed former slave and published her research findings in an article "Cudjo's Own Story of the Last African Slaves." iForty-five years later it was discovered to have been plagiarized from Historic Sketches of the Old South by Emma Langdon Roche (1914). Hurston had an change to work with Langston Hughes on a play Mule Bone: A Comedy of Negro Life, but they could not agree on the deserved credits, so the play was never produced.
After college, when Hurston began working as an ethnologist, she combined fiction and her knowledge of culture. Mrs. Rufus Osgood Mason financially supported Hurston's ethnology work on the condition that Hurston not publish anything. It was only after Hurston cut herself off from Mrs. Mason's financial patronage that she began publishing her poetry and fiction.
Zora Neale Hurston's best-known work was published in 1937: Their Eyes Were Watching God, a novel which was controversial because it didn't fit easily into stereotypes of black stories. She was criticized within the black community for taking funds from whites to support her writing; she wrote about themes "too black" to appeal to many whites.
Hurston's popularity waned. Her last book was published in 1948. She worked for a time on the faculty of North Carolina College for Negroes in Durham, she wrote for Warner Brothers motion pictures, and for some time worked on staff at the Library of Congress.
Eventually, Hurston went back to Florida. She never married and had no childen. In 1960 she died there in poverty, her work nearly forgotten and thus lost to most readers.
In the 1970s, during the "second wave" of feminism,Alice Walker helped revive interest in Zora Neale Hurston's writings, bringing them back to public attention. Today Hurston's novels and poetry are studied in literature classes and in women's studies and black studies courses. They have become again popular with the general reading public.
Reverend John Hurston moved the family to Eatonville, Florida, which was the first all-black town in the United Stated, when Zora was only three. Besides for serving as a pastor he also served three times as mayor of Eatonville. Lucy Hurston died with Zora was thirteen. Her father remarried, and the siblings were separated, moving in with different relatives.
Education: Hurston had little education as a child. As an adult working as a domestic in Baltimore her employer helped her enter Mogan Academy, a division of Mogan College, in 1917. When she enrolled she was twenty-six, but she gave her age as sixteen and her birth year as 1901. She graduated from Morgan in 1918 and entered Howard University in Washington D,C, In 1925, she moved to New York and transferred to Barnard College, an affiliate of Columbia University. Annie Nathan Meyer, founder of Barnard College, found a scholarship for Zora Neale Hurston. Hurston began her study of anthropology at Barnard under Franz Boaz, studying also with Ruth Benedict and Gladys Reichard. With the help of Boaz and Elsie Clews Parsons, Hurston was able to win a six-month grant she used to collect African American folklore. In 1925, Hurston was awarded her B.A,
Early Work: While Hurston was still at Howard University she has Alain Locke as a professor. He was not only a professor of philosophy but also an expert on black culture. His work was the inspiration Hurston's literary career, The Howard University Magazine, The Stylus, published her first short story "John Redding Goes to Sea," which was set in Eatonville. Hurston used the essense of Eatonville in many of her writings because she saw it as a 'perfect place' where American Blacks could live without he need to follow the norms of white society. During the years that followed continued writing for several different magazines. Opportunity, a black journal, published one of her short stories, "Spunk," which gained the attention of several poets who were involved in the Harlem Renaissance, including Langston Hughes and Countee Cullen. This was what led her to transfer to Barnard where she was amanuensis for the the novelist Fannie Hurst.
The Harlem Renaissance: The Harlem Renaissance was a period during which black artists moved away from the traditional dialectal works. The were no longer satisfied imitating white writers. It was an opportunity for blacks to explore black culture and express pride in their race through in all forms of artistic mediums. Huston's stories about Eatonville became a major force in shaping the Harlem Renaissance. Her work in anthropology was combined with her writing. She worked under the tutelage of Franz Boaz, a famous professor in the field. Additionally, she combined her studies in anthropology with her literary output. Studying under the famed professor of anthropology Franz Boas, she was allowed to do field research (1927-1932) in the south with a fellowship from the Association for the Study of Negro Life and History. This was a chance for her to collect folklore She also interviewed former slave and published her research findings in an article "Cudjo's Own Story of the Last African Slaves." iForty-five years later it was discovered to have been plagiarized from Historic Sketches of the Old South by Emma Langdon Roche (1914). Hurston had an change to work with Langston Hughes on a play Mule Bone: A Comedy of Negro Life, but they could not agree on the deserved credits, so the play was never produced.
After college, when Hurston began working as an ethnologist, she combined fiction and her knowledge of culture. Mrs. Rufus Osgood Mason financially supported Hurston's ethnology work on the condition that Hurston not publish anything. It was only after Hurston cut herself off from Mrs. Mason's financial patronage that she began publishing her poetry and fiction.
Zora Neale Hurston's best-known work was published in 1937: Their Eyes Were Watching God, a novel which was controversial because it didn't fit easily into stereotypes of black stories. She was criticized within the black community for taking funds from whites to support her writing; she wrote about themes "too black" to appeal to many whites.
Hurston's popularity waned. Her last book was published in 1948. She worked for a time on the faculty of North Carolina College for Negroes in Durham, she wrote for Warner Brothers motion pictures, and for some time worked on staff at the Library of Congress.
Eventually, Hurston went back to Florida. She never married and had no childen. In 1960 she died there in poverty, her work nearly forgotten and thus lost to most readers.
In the 1970s, during the "second wave" of feminism,Alice Walker helped revive interest in Zora Neale Hurston's writings, bringing them back to public attention. Today Hurston's novels and poetry are studied in literature classes and in women's studies and black studies courses. They have become again popular with the general reading public.