Zora Neale Hurston
2022
Novelist · Folklorist · Anthropologist
Zora Neale Hurston was born on January 7, 1891, to John Hurston and Lucy Potts Hurston in Notasulga, Alabama. The family moved to Eatonville, Florida – the sole African American town to receive a charter in the United States.
“Maybe, some of the details of my birth as told me might be a little inaccurate, but it is pretty well established that I really did get born.”
Zora was adventurous and inquisitive. As a child, Zora would test boundaries and dream of walking “out to the horizon” looking to “see what the end of the world was like.” She engaged her creativity and imagined stories and plays.
Her life in Eatonville would change radically when, at 13, her mother passed and her father remarried shortly thereafter. Zora soon left Eatonville and worked, wandered, and struggled to finish school. She earned an associate's degree from Howard University and a bachelor's at Barnard University in New York – the only African American student at the time.
“Research is formalized curiosity. It is poking and prying with a purpose. It is a seeking that he who wishes may know the cosmic secrets of the world and they that dwell therein.”
In Florida, Zora documented rural African American folk stories. In New Orleans, Zora “…delved into Hoodoo, or sympathetic magic,” which mapped West African religion over Catholicism and Catholic iconography. Zora also researched and documented the folk music of the Bahamas, even producing several shows in the United States featuring this music. She went to Haiti and Jamaica to document Voodoo rituals there, concluding Voodoo to be no “more invalid than any other religion.”
"The unreachable and therefore the unknowable always seem divine—hence, religion. People need religion because the great masses fear life and its consequences. Its responsibilities weigh heavy. Feeling a weakness in the face of great forces, men seek an alliance with omnipotence to bolster up their feeling of weakness, even though the omnipotence they rely upon is a creature of their own minds."
Zora Neale Hurston was a major figure in the Harlem Renaissance. She was one of the giants amongst Langston Hughes, Alain Locke, and Ethel Waters. Zora published four novels, two books of folklore, an autobiography, numerous short stories, and several essays, articles and plays.
She considered the cultures of the African diaspora as a palette to paint her life. Hurston was not a Christian nor did she adhere to any religious denomination or sect. It would be a mischaracterization to label her an atheist, however. Christopher A. Cameron, Ph.D. the University of North Carolina, holds that “Hurston never articulated an atheist position, but her ideas about God and prayer show her to be a Deist.”
“… while we all talk about justice more than any other quality on earth, there is no such thing as justice in the absolute in the world.”
Zora remained active throughout her life, though fell into obscurity after her passing. Another literary giant, Alice Walker (The Color Purple), is credited with rediscovering Zora – ensuring that future generations of writers, anthropologists, and philosophers would know of her work.