Zora Neale Hurston was born in Eatonville, Florida, the first self-governed all black city in the United States. The date of her birth is unclear as Hurston used various birth dates (from 1898-1910) on official documents. Her mother was a former schoolteacher, and her father was a carpenter and Baptist minister. At the age of nine, Hurston's mother died and two weeks later Hurston was sent to a school in Jacksonville and her father unsuccessfully requested that the school adopt her. By the age of fourteen, Hurston had to support herself; she held numerous domestic jobs until she was hired as the personal maid to a cast member of a traveling Gilbert and Sullivan repertory group.  In 1917, Zora Neale Hurston enrolled in the high school division of Morgan Academy (now Morgan State University) in Baltimore, Maryland.  She graduated early and worked as a waitress and manicurist in order to raise the money for tuition to Howard University.  In 1921, Hurston published her first story in a literary club magazine at Howard.  It was also at Howard that Hurston met and fell in love with Herbert Sheen.  They married in 1927 and amicably divorced two years later.

In 1925, Hurston won second prize for a story and play in a contest sponsored by Opportunity: A journal of Negro Life.  At the awards dinner Hurston met many influential people; one of the judges, Fannie Hurst, hired Hurston as her personal secretary.  In 1925, Hurston became Barnard's first black student and received a scholarship through novelist, founder of Barnard, and supporter of the Harlem Renaissance, Annie Nathen Mayer.  During the 1920's, Zora Neale Hurston was dubbed "Queen of the Renaissance" as she was a major figure in the Harlem Renaissance.  During this time, she published numerous stories and founded a magazine with Wallace Thurman, and friend Langston Hughes. After receiving a B.A. from Barnard, Hurston began graduate work at Columbia University. She studied under Franz Boas, one of most important anthropologists in the country. Hurston continued writing short stories but she became more interested in anthropology and African American folklore. Funded by Guggenheim fellowships, Hurston spent the next decade traveling and researching African American folklore and voodoo beliefs. She traveled throughout the south and into Jamaica and Haiti. In 1938, she documented her experiences in Jamaica and Haiti in Tell my Horse.  She also published Mules and Men, which tells of her travels in the South and the folklore she collected there. In 1937, Hurston published Their Eyes Were Watching God, which incorporated some of her Eatonville experience into the novel.

In 1948, Hurston was living in New York and was accused of molesting a young boy. The case was dismissed but the press had already made the story into front-page scandal.  Hurston was never able to recover financially after the scandal. Her last story was published in 1950, in The Saturday Evening Post. At the time of publication, she was living in Florida working as a maid. She worked various menial jobs until she suffered from a stroke in 1959 and moved into a welfare home. Zora Neale Hurston  died on January 28, 1960 and was buried in an unmarked grave in Fort Pierce Florida's segregated cemetery, Garden of the Heavenly Rest. 

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Articles About Hurston, Zora Neale

Zora's Immortal South	February 19, 2007
Eatonville, Florida has one main street, with dusty sidewalks, drooping Spanish moss, and sad, tin-roofed houses of faded stucco. Blink and you may miss it: the total land area is just about a mile. Yet for admirers of Zora Neale Hurston and her classic novel Their Eyes Were Watching God, Eatonville is the home of tall tales, true love, and a vibrant culture that seeps from real-life onto the page.
Zora Neale Hurston: A Literary Life	February 5, 2007
Zora Neale Hurston was the fifth of eight children born to John Hurston, a carpenter, and Lucy Potts Hurston, a former schoolteacher. Hurston grew up in Eatonville, a small town 10 miles northeast of Orlando, Florida. Hurston frequently fudged her birthdate as 1901, but most scholars believe she was born in 1891.