prolific writer, anthropologist, essayist, editor,
dramatist, magazine founder, historian, and teacher.
Zora Neale Hurston was born in Notasulga,
Alabama, to John and Lucy Potts Hurston. A
granddaughter of formerly enslaved Georgians,
Hurston had deep ties to the South and its
African-American history and culture. The sec-
ond daughter and fifth child in her family, she was
raised in EATONVILLE, Florida, the nation’s first
all-black incorporated town. The town elected
John Hurston as mayor three times. She was edu-
cated at the Robert Hungerford Normal and In-
dustrial School, an institution founded by
TUSKEGEE INSTITUTE graduates. When her
mother died, Zora’s father made arrangements for
her to relocate to Jacksonville, Florida, and enroll
in the Florida Baptist Academy. Despite the emo-
tional turmoil associated with her devastating loss,
Hurston excelled in her studies. She had to leave
after a year, despite her father’s suggestion that
the school adopt his youngest child. She returned
to Eatonville, her father, and new stepmother. She
left home in 1905, after a series of domestic bat-
tles that resulted in the departure of two older
brothers.
Zora Neale Hurston was not the only Hurston
child to excel as a professional. Clifford Hurston, a
MOREHOUSECOLLEGEgraduate, became a teacher
and settled in Selma, Alabama. Her brother
Robert attended Meharry Medical College in
Nashville, Tennessee, and went on to establish his
own practice. Hurston, who had benefited from
her schoolteacher mother’s love of learning, went
on to attend Morgan Academy, the college
preparatory division of the institution now known
as Morgan State University. Hurston, who had
traveled for two years with a Gilbert and Sullivan
troupe before arriving in Baltimore and at the
Morgan Academy, planned to continue her studies
at Morgan College. However, an encounter with
MAYMILLERSULLIVAN, the future playwright and
the daughter of HOWARDUNIVERSITYDean KELLY
MILLER, prompted her to set her sights on the elite
school in WASHINGTON, D.C. She took courses at
Howard Academy to prepare her for the academic
transition and began classes at Howard in the fall
of 1919. She attended classes through the fall of
1923 but did not graduate. In September 1925, she
transferred to BARNARDCOLLEGEin NEWYORK
CITY. She was the only African-American student
enrolled in the school but was thoroughly unde-
terred by that sobering reality. Hurston’s studies
with FRANZBOAS, the renowned anthropologist at
COLUMBIAUNIVERSITY, began during her years at
Barnard. She earned her B.A. in 1928 and began
graduate studies in anthropology at Columbia. She
went on to become one of Boas’s most well-known
and accomplished students.
Hurston married Howard Sheen, a fellow
Howard University student, in 1927. When they
married, Sheen was completing his last year of
studies at the University of Chicago Medical
School. In a March 1927 letter to friends
DOROTHYWESTand HELENEJOHNSON, Hurston
referred to herself as “Mrs. Herbert Arnold Sheen,262 Hurston, Zora Neale
Zora Neale Hurston, photographed by Carl Van
Vechten. Permission granted by the Van Vechten Trust
(Yale Collection of American Literature, Beinecke Rare
Book and Manuscript Library)