Early Life

Born on January 7, 1891 in Alabama to former slave parents, Zora worked hard to get an education. Her family moved to Eatonville, FL when she was very young. She was the daughter of a Baptist preacher and had seven siblings. Her mother died when she was just 13 years old. Growing up, she didn't have much contact with white people, so until her teens,  Zora was largely sheltered from racism.  Her life at home became very difficult after the death of her mother, and at 16 she joined a traveling theatrical company and ended up in New York City during the Harlem Renaissance. Zora was a talented, energetic, young woman with a powerful desire to learn. She was also known to have a fiery intellect, an infectious sense of humor, and "the gift," as one friend put it, "of walking into hearts." Zora worked many jobs over the years to support herself and finance her education. She went to Baltimore when she was 26 but she didn’t have her high school diploma so she couldn’t get into college. So she presented herself as a teenager and subtracted 10 years off her life, making her 16 years old. From that moment on, Hurston always presented herself as at least 10 years younger than she actually was. She was a beautiful woman who had the looks to pull it off, so why not.

 

 

Education

After she entered school at Morgan Academy she went on to Howard University and got her associate's degree there. Zora quickly became famous for her storytelling talents. She studied anthropology with a prominent professor at Barnard, Franz Boas, and she graduated from Barnard in 1928. For two years later, she pursued graduate studies in anthropology at Columbia University and received a fellowship to collect oral histories and folklore in her home state. Her trips were funded by folklorist Charlotte Mason, who was willing to fund her folklore expeditions as long as he retained control over how the material was used.

 

Work

After a few years, her relationship with Mason was at a breaking point and Mason eventually ended their contract on March 31, 1931. The country was heading towards the Great Depression and Zora, desperate for an income, felt that the best vehicle for her work was the theater and the best type of production was a folk musical based on her memories of Eatonville. She was thrilled when her play, The Great Day, played for one night at the John Golden Theatre on January 27, 1931. Unfortunately, the play was forced to close, because Zora had no producers that were interested in keeping the production going. So she took her dream down south to Florida and staged two productions, From Sun to Sun and All De Live Long Day, in 1933 and 1934. Many people from her hometown of Eatonville acted in these plays. That's when her dream of a folk theater became somewhat noticed. She was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship in March 1936 and was able to travel to Jamaica and Haiti. While she was in Haiti she began writing Their Eyes Were Watching God, embodying all of her passion for her lover, Percy Punter, into the portrayal of Tea Cake. She completed the book in seven weeks and Their Eyes Were Watching God was published on September 18, 1937. She also continued her anthropological studies in voodoo in Haiti and published Tell My Horse in 1938.

 

 

Life and Death

Zora married her boyfriend, Herbert Sheen but the marriage did not do too well and the couple separated shortly after tying the knot. In search of new stories to boost her writing career, Hurston returned to Eatonville and began publishing her works after graduation. Zora’s literary career flourished immensely from 1930s to early 1940s. However, I don't think Zora recieved the recognition she deserved with her novel, Their Eyes Were Watching God. Often times she had difficulties getting her work published, thus she struggled to survive financially. On September 13, 1948, a mother accused Zora of molesting her 10 year old son, who was mentally retarded. Although Zora's passport proved that she was in out of the country at the time, she was devastated when the story was splashed across the African American tabloids. She sunk into a period of depression, even though she had support and lawyers to defend her. She wasn't found guilty of any of the charges because the boy confessed that he had falsely accused her of the act. However, the accusation haunted her the rest of her life. During the next decade, Zora was selling occasional articles to popular magazines and working as a maid to survive. Money continued to become a bigger problem, as well as her health. In 1958, Hurston suffered a series of strokes and entered the St. Lucie County Welfare Home. She died on January 28, 1960. Patrick Duval rescued her manuscripts from destruction when her possessions were being burned after she died. She was buried in a grave that was unmarked at the Garden of Heavenly Rest in Ft. Pierce. Thirteen years later, Alice Walker located her grave and placed a grave stone on it.