NOBLE WARRIOR: ZORA NEALE HURSTON

By

Cleo E. Brown 
 
 

      Zora Neale Hurston embodied Republican sentiments concerning race-relations and African-American People.  Infuriating many people including Langston Hughes, Countee Cullen, and Richard Wright because of her “right-wing” and ultraconservative perspective, by the time of her death, at the age of sixty-nine, Hurston had become an obscure writer dying in a welfare home for the aged.

      Born on January 7^th, 1891 in Notasulga, Alabama Hurston was an Anthropologist, a Folklorist, and a Writer.  Her father, who was named John Hurston, was a carpenter, a farmer, and a minister.  He was eventually to become The Mayor of the all Black Town of Eatonville, Florida which The Hurston Family moved to when Zora was only three years old.  Zora Hurston’s mother was named Lucy Ann (Nee Potts) Hurston.  Lucy Hurston was a school teacher who died when Zora was only thirteen years old.  Zora Hurston was the fifth child of eight children born to John and Lucy Hurston.

      John Hurston remarried shortly after his wife’s death.  He married a woman who cared little for the inclusion of John’s children into their lives.  Zora, consequently, was sent to a boarding school in Jacksonville, Florida which, her father stopped paying for causing the school to expel Zora Hurston.  (Women in History, “Zora Neale Hurston” , p.1)  Her expulsion by The Jacksonville, Florida school caused Zora to work as a Maid to the lead singer in a traveling Gilbert and Sullivan Theater Company.  (Wikipedia, “Zora Neale Hurston”, p.1) 

      By the age of twenty-six, however, Zora was ready to return to school and to complete her high school education.  Because of her age, however, she was no longer eligible for a free education.  She began, therefore, to lie about her age telling the authorities that she had been born in 1901.  (“About Zora Neale Hurston”, p.2)  According to Zora Neale Hurston’s website, she never restored the missing ten years to her age always preferring to claim that she was ten years younger than she actually was. (“About Zora Neale Hurston” , p.2)  Zora, consequently, completed her high school education in Baltimore, Maryland at The Morgan Academy stating that she was sixteen years old instead of twenty-six years old (p.2).

      Upon her graduation from high school in 1918, Zora Neale Hurston enrolled in Howard University in Washington, D.C. (Women in History, “Zora Neale Hurston: extended profile”, p.1)  At Howard University, Hurston became an early member of Zeta Phi Beta Sorority and the co-founder of the student newspaper entitled The Hilltop.  (Wikipedia, p.2)  Here she was to meet one of her mentors named Dr. Alain Locke.  Alain Locke was a Doctor of Philosophy and an authority on Black Culture who both inspired and influenced Hurston.  After publishing several short stories in The Styles and in Opportunity Hurston transferred to Barnard College.  According to Wikipedia, Hurston  left Howard University in 1924.  By 1925 she had been offered a scholarship to Barnard College where she was the Columbia University affiliate’s “sole Black Student.” (Wikipedia, p.2)   Hurston received her B.A. in 1928. (Women in History, p.2)  Eventually she was offered a scholarship to Columbia University where she studied Anthropology.  While she had been a student at Barnard she had studied with Franz Boaz, Ruth Benedict, and fellow-anthropology student Margaret Mead. (Wikipedia, p.2)  Hurston spent two years as a graduate student in Anthropology at Columbia University.

      Being in New York and having made contact with Langston Hughes and Countee Cullen, Hurston became a major force in The Harlem Renaissance.  (Women in History, p.2)  Hurston, Hughes, and Wallace Thurman began The Harlem Renaissance by referring to themselves , collectively, as “The Niggerati”.  (Wikipedia, p.3)  As “The Niggerati” they produced a literary magazine called Fire!!  This magazine featured many of the literary and visual artists of The Harlem Renaissance. (Wikipedia, p. 3)  The Harlem Renaissance was the immersion into African and Black History, Art, Culture, and Life by people of color.

      Zora Neale Hurston was married twice.  Her first marriage to Herbert Sheen lasted from 1927 to 1931.  Sheen had been a fellow classmate at Howard and a jazz musician who would later become a physician. (Wikipedia, p.2)  Her second husband was a fellow WPA worker named Albert Price whom Hurston married in 1939.  Price, who was only twenty-three years old, was twenty-five years younger than Hurston.  This marriage lasted for only several months.  Unfortunately, Hurston’s romantic life went from bad to worse when she was accused of molesting a ten-year old retarded boy in 1948.  According to Wikipedia, however, “the case was dismissed after Hurston presented evidence that she was in Honduras when the crime was committed in the U.S.”(p.2)

      As an Anthropologist, folklorist, and writer Zora Neale Hurston is credited with having written forty short-stories, four novels, two books of folklore, and one autobiography as well as several essays, articles, and plays.  (“About Zora Neale Hurston”, p.1)  Her most famous and critically acclaimed work is Their Eyes were Watching God.  There have been many criticisms of Hurston’s work including the fact that she has been accused of  writing for Caucasian Audiences.  She has also been criticized for her use of idiomatic Negroid dialect/ Black English to convey the sentiments of African-American characters in her writings.  African-American critics and intellectuals preferred that Hurston use conventional English.  Of these criticisms Zora replied:  “I think that you will discover that my viewpoint is that I do not consider Negroes as special oddities among humanity.  I see us as a people, subject to the same desires and emotions as others…That is the way I see Negroes, and that is the way I write about them…” (The Association to Preserve Eatonville, Inc., “Zora Neale Hurston”, p.1)

      At a time when African-Americans were deserting The Republican Party to vote for Franklin D. Roosevelt and Harry Truman, Zora Neale Hurston continued to support The GOP referring to President Truman as “The Butcher of Asia” after he authorized dropping the atom bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. (Wikipedia, p.5)  Despite being a WPA worker, she did not support The New Deal innovations began by Franklin Roosevelt decades earlier.  Hurston, subsequently, supported The Presidential Campaign of Republican Senator Robert Taft in 1952.(Wikipedia, p.5)

      Hurston also apposed the Supreme Court Ruling in Brown vs. The School Board of Topeka, Kansas in 1954.   In Brown, and Earl Warren Court ordered the desegregation of the public schools because of the psychological damage inflicted upon Black Children by segregation.  Hurston, on the other hand, felt that it was an insult to tell Black People that they could not learn effectively amongst other Black People.  She also feared that the Brown Decision would signal the end of Black Schools, Black Universities, Black Teachers, and all other Black Institutions.  She also attacked the right of Black People in the south to vote, claiming that the votes of the lesser intelligent were being bought.  (Women in History, “Zora Neale Hurston: extended profile”, p.3)  All of these factors tended to alienate Hurston from the Black Community including the fact that she refused to write about the Black struggle during The Civil Rights Movement.  For having grown up in the All Black Town of Eatonville, where Black People were independent of White intervention, hers was an elitist attitude which did not support integration.

      Zora Neale Hurston, consequently, when she died of hypertensive heart disease at The Saint Lucie County Welfare Home in Fort Pierce, Florida on January 28^th, 1960 was poor and obscure.  More recently, however, there has  been a revival of her work due to the interest of people such as Ralph Ellison, Tony Morrison, and Alice Walker.  (Women in History, p.3)  In fact, it was Alice Walker in 1973 who found Hurston’s unmarked g rave in a Forida Cemetary providing the grave with a tombstone which reads: “Zora Neale Hurston: A Genius of the South.”  (“About Zora Neale Hurston”, by Valerie Boyd, p.3)  The town of Eatonville, Florida additionally holds a festival each year during the last week of January in Zora Neale Hurston’s honor.  (Presented by the Association to Preserve Eatonville, Inc., “Zora! Zora Festival”, p.1)