zora neil hurston was a world-renowned writer and anthropologist who was credited with being one of the founding members of the harlem renaissance movement of the early 20th century at the peak of her career hurston had established herself as a folklorist storyteller and the leading progressive female literary voice of the harlem renaissance thanks to her captivating writings about the black american experience if there were any words to capture riveting life of zora no hurston it would be her own i have the nerve to walk my own way however hard and search for reality rather than climb upon the rattling wagon of wishful illusions zora no hurston was born january 7 1891 she was the sixth of eight children to former slaves john hurston a carpenter and baptist minister and lucy potts-hurston a schoolteacher in notisogla alabama when she was very young zora's father moved them to eatonville florida in search of jobs and relief from racism that such a place promised in many ways they found precisely what they wanted eatonville was the first incorporated all-black city in america by 1914 there would be some 30 of them throughout the south she grew up with a rare experience of not being a minority seeing black people exist with agency and positions of authority without the constant brutal indignities of racial injustice zora's depictions of the self-ruled colored eden would become legend and in recent years have seemed to hold out a rulefully tempting alternative to the ordeals of integration the benefits of the self-segregated life have been attested to by the fact that eatonville produced hurston herself a black writer uniquely whole-souled and self-possessed and imbued with an alice walker's phrase racial health the family was prominent in eatonville where her father became the minister of zion hope baptist church and was elected mayor eventually serving three terms her mother taught her to read before she started school and encouraged her to jump at the sun her father routinely smacked her down and warned her not to act white the child he adored was her docile older sister one must go to hurston's autobiography novel jonas gourd vine for a portrait of this highly charismatic but morally weak man whose compulsive philandering eventually destroyed all he built despite being in a public eye it's been long claimed that her father was having an affair with the younger woman he went on to marry after his wife passed away in 1904 the death of her mother was a turning point in zora's life she clashed with her new stepmother who at 20 was only six years older than her zora was known even as a child of 14 to voice her own opinion she was eventually sent away by her father and stepmother to a boarding school in jacksonville florida but she was dismissed from school when her family stopped paying her tuition hurston bounced around living with several relatives until she started attending the high school division of morgan state university in baltimore maryland in 1917. many historians cite that hurston then aged 26 wiped 10 years from her age and claimed 1901 as her birth year to qualify for a free high school education working at every kind of job maid waitress manicurist she managed to finish high school by june of 1918. in 1919 she attended howard university in washington dc where she co-founded the historically black college's newspaper studied greek spanish english and public speaking she published her first story john redding goes to sea in the campus literary societies magazine in 1921. it was during this critical period in her life that she truly began to demonstrate her incredible writing ability while building relationships with established and notable black authors like alan locke who's the first african american rhodes scholar and is credited with being the dean of the harlem renaissance under lock's tutelage hurston was selected in 1920 to become a member of his literary club the stylist which provided her with the opportunity to start writing short stories and meet other authors including w.e.b dubois alice dunbar nelson gene tumor and jessie facette who all later helped form the harlem renaissance alongside hurston after obtaining her associate's degree from howard university hurston left washington dc in 1924 in 1925 she arrived in new york city with no job no friends and only a dollar and fifty cents in her pocket she settled in harlem where she secured free housing in a building for writers one of her stories had been accepted by opportunity the premier magazine of new negro writing that may at the first opportunity banquet she received two awards one for fiction and one for drama from such judges as fanny hearst a best-selling novelist and eugene o'neill zora's flamboyant entrance at a party following the ceremonies sailing a scarf over her shoulder and crying out the title of her play color struck made a greater impression than her work would do for years this was the new public zora or bravado and laughter happily startling her audience with the truth of his own preoccupations that night she attached herself to fanny hearst for whom she was soon work as secretary but then when it turned out she couldn't type or keep anything in order she was kept as kind of a rental exotic complete with the outlandish stories and a turban her new boss once tried to pass her off in a segregated restaurant as an african princess hurston's harlem circle was loudly scornful of the parts she was willing to play for her though it was an experience it was not washing floors it was going somewhere and the somewhere still hadn't changed at the banquet she had also met annie nathan mayer a founder of bernard college in the fall of 1925 this ever masquerading newly glamorous burgeoning literary queen of linux avenue enrolled again in school she had completed less than two years at howard and had finagled a scholarship out of mayor and discovered anthropology [Music] hurston was accepted into barnard college at columbia university in september of 1925 she was the school's only black student while enrolled she conducted ethnographic research alongside acclaimed anthropologist franz boaz who she was considered to be a protege of but outside of studying anthropology hurston followed her writing passion and flourished as the leading progressive female literary force during the harlem renaissance which was then known as the new negro movement while becoming a central figure during its literary period hurston also hosted gatherings where fellow authors like langston hughes and county cullen could be counted among guests zora was high-spirited self-possessed outgoing and witty she could arrest the attention of an audience by presence or on paper in 1926 hurston hughes and fellow author wallace thurman joined together to produce a literary magazine called fire that featured many artists and writers of the harlem renaissance her descriptive and captivating writings about the african-american experience awarded her with prestigious fellowships including fourteen hundred dollars from carter woodson's association for the study of negro life in history in 1927. during the same year she married for the first time she would go on to marry and divorce twice more she met her husband herbert sheen who was a jazz musician later turned physician while the pair were classmates at howard university and though hurston's name kept rising in a literary world especially after winning short story and playwriting contests for magazines and literary journals she still struggled to make ends meet until the fall of 1927. zora found a patron philanthropist charlotte oscar mason a wealthy white widow who took an interest in hurston's ability to document the african-american experience for more than three years mrs mason paid for hurston to make forays to the south to collect negro folk material hurston's findings were not always suspendedly invigorating nor her attitude as positive as they later appeared i have changed my mind about this place she wrote despairingly from eatonville in an unpublished letter in 1932. they steal everything here even the greens out of the garden but she became increasingly accomplished as searching out what she had been hired to find and the results have proved to be invaluable alan lomax who worked with hurston on a seminal 1935 library of congress folk music recording expedition wrote of her unique ability to win over the locals since she talks their language and can out any of them the fruits of her field work appeared in various forms throughout the early 1930s stories plays musical reviews academic articles her research is almost as evident in the 1934 novel jonas gord vine as in her book of folklore mules and men which appeared the following year now routinely saluted as the first history of black american folklore by a black author mules in men was faulted by black critics of its own time because of its adamant exclusion of certain elements of the southern negro experience like exploitation terror misery and bitterness she graduated from barnard in 1928 with a bachelor of arts degree in anthropology and thanks to mason's financial support and the fellowship money hurston was able to kick start her career and travel extensively in the caribbean and the south it was during this period in 1928 when hurston met cojo lewis then aged 90 living in plateau alabama the last living survivor of the middle passage she published an article kojo's own story the last african slaver in 1928 but she was accused of plagiarizing the work of emma roche to gather more information hurston traveled back and forth to plateau to new york to document lewis's prolific story as an anthropologist until she fully immersed herself in his life of her time spent with lewis hurston wrote in a letter to langston hughes that the experience left her deeply moved according to her biography wrapped in rainbows the life of zora nor hurston by author valerie boyd tears welled up in his eyes as he described the trip across the ocean into clotilda hurston wrote as cited in boyd's biography but what moved hurston most about the old man whom she always called by his african name kozola was how he continued to miss his people back in nigeria i lonely for my folks he told her after 75 years he still had a tragic sense of loss that yearning for blood and cultural ties the sense of mutilation gave me something to feel about she said in 1931 hurston wrote the manuscript barakum the story of the last black cargo but it was turned down by multiple publishers who felt the lewis's heavy accented dialect was too difficult to read that same year the manuscript was rejected hurston's marriage failed in the thirties zor explored the fine arts through a number of different projects she worked with langston hughes on a play called mule bone a comedy of negro life disputes over the work would eventually lead to a falling out between the two they wrote several other plays including the great day and from sun to sun zora continued to write and drew attention for her contributions to magazines including the journal of american folklore in 1934 she was able to publish her first novel jonah's gourd vine hurston eventually returned back to florida for a period of time where she collected african-american folk tales and published a collection of stories in her 1935 book mules in men the book received positive reviews as it was one of the first to document african american folklore from the north florida timber camps herself received rave reviews and positive feedback when she published her autobiography dust tracks on the road where she talked about her life in eatonville which was often a subject in many of her short stories by this time her son had won enough recognition to go off on a guggenheim grant to study spiritual and cultural rituals and voodoo practices in the caribbean it was not a happy trip the anecdotal study she produced tell my horse published in 1938 is tetchy she was disgusted by the virulent colorism of leicester milados towards blacks in jamaica this particular trip had been prompted less by an interest in research rather than by the need to escape new york where she left a man she thought would be the love of her life a still mysterious figure who belongs less to her biography than to her art in a period of seven weeks in haiti in the fall of 1936 she wrote their eyes were watching god a novel meant to embalm all the tenderness of my passion for him she wrote their eyes were watching god brought a heartbeat and breath to all of hurston's years of research raising a full culture to the heights of art it fulfilled the harlem renaissance dream the story chronicled the tumultuous life of janie crawford hurston broke literary norms by focusing her work on the experience of a black woman hurston's work was not without criticism in his review fellow esteemed writer richard wright condemned the novel as lacking a message and theme miss hurston can write but her prose is cloaked in that fascial sensuality that has dog negro expression since the days of phyllis wheatley he wrote her dialogue manages to catch the psychological movements of the negro folk mind in their pure simplicity but that's as far as it goes wright also accused her sin of continuing a forced tradition of black writers using menstrual techniques to pander to whites her novel is not addressed to the negro but to a white audience whose chauvinistic tastes she knows how to satisfy their eyes of watching god earn positive reviews from white mainstream media and overwhelmingly negative reactions from black writers including wright ralph ellison alan locke and otis ferguson while traveling the country documenting the black american experience she got married again in 1939 this time to albert price a third of jacksonville florida but their relationship lasted only seven months and she filed for divorce before they reconciled until officially divorcing in 1943 without a doubt hurston was a woman of strong character and she went through life mostly alone she burned sorrow and fear like fuel to keep herself going she made a point of not needing what she could not have whites who avoided her company suffered their own loss she claimed to not have ever really wanted her father's affection other needs were just as unwelcome about love she knew the way it could make a woman take second place in her own life repeatedly she fought the pole not the one to give up on finding love hurston married for a third time but that union to james howell pitts of cleveland ended in less than a year florida rivers individualism her refuge from racism had lapsed into nearly total isolation she returned to new york in 1946 looking for work and wound up in the campaign office of the republican congressional candidate running against adam clayton powell when her side lost she was stranded for a terrible winter in a room on 124th street in a different sort of isolation she didn't ask for help and didn't get any she felt herself slipping surrounded by racists and haters the whole city a basement to hell her thirst for knowledge and discovering new cultures was an all-time high when she traveled to puerto cortes honduras and hopes to find the mayan ruins or yet to be discovered civilization the writer kept her pent up had and began to write another book during her short time in south america it was just after that that she wrote her last published novel seraph on the swanee but upon her return to the us on september 13th 1948 hurston was arrested in new york on charges of child molestation when an ex-landlord accused the author of molesting her mentally disturbed ten-year-old son hurston was indicted even though she was not in the country at the time of the allegation which her passport proved she was devastated when the story was splashed across african-american tabloids she sunk into a period of deep depression leaving her humiliated and suicidal she was acquitted of all charges when the boy confessed he had falsely accused hurston of the act but her reputation took a big hit no one wanted to publish any of her books or writings the name she worked so hard to build over her lifetime faded away she never returned to new york for the rest of her life she lived in florida on scant money in whatever dignity she was able to salvage [Music] during the final decade of her life she kept writing but struggled to get anything published she landed a job in 1957 at the pan american world airways technical library at the patrick air force base but was fired for being too well educated for the position the once popular female wordsmith started to work a number of odd jobs including working as a maid in a hotel in miami until her health started to decline and she was forced to enter st lucie county welfare home she died penniless and without any family around hurston never received the financial rewards she deserved the largest royalty she ever earned for any of her books was 943.75 so when she died on january 28 1960 at age 69 after suffering a stroke her neighbors in fort pierce florida had to take up a collection for her february 7th funeral the the collection didn't yield enough to pay for a headstone so hurston was buried in a grave that remained unmarked until 1973. that summer a young writer named alice walker traveled to fort pierce to place a marker on the grave of the author who has so inspired her own work walker found the garden of heavenly rest a segregated cemetery at the dead end of north 17th street abandoned and overgrown with yellow flowered weeds miss walker renewed public interests while introducing a new generation to zora when she wrote an essay in search of zoronil hersen that was published in miss magazine's march 1975 issue robert hemingway's acclaimed biography zorrino hurston in 1977 continued the renewal of interest and the forgotten literary great for a number of years hurston was on a faculty of north carolina college for negros now north carolina central university in durham she was also on the staff of the library of congress hurston has received several posthumous recognitions for her contributions to the harlem renaissance and the literary world in 2005 oprah winfrey produced the film version of their eyes were watching god starring halle berry as janie crawford and michael early as tea cake although completed in 1931 barakum the story of the last black cargo was released in 2018. this once rejected work went on to become a new york times bestseller and winner of time magazine's best nonfiction book of 2018 earning additional awards and accolades today her legacy endures through such efforts as the annual zora festival in her old hometown of eatonville florida zora neil hurston was a preeminent writer of the 20th century one of the greatest of her time she was revolutionary and unapologetic in the study and preservation of black culture and traditions in the americas and the caribbean her work offers a unique view of the black experience that elevates and illuminates the beauty and humanity of a people that society refused to fully accept or acknowledge although she was forgotten her talent influence and contributions could not stay buried in the resurrection of zora's work she has finally achieved a reverence that was long overdue zora no hurston queen of the harlem renaissance and onyx queen if you enjoyed this video please share like and subscribe to this channel thank you for watching