Hurston, Zora Neale 209Alabama, and Lucy Ann Potts, a schoolteacher. Hurston’s
writing was heavily infl uenced by her historical and cul-
tural circumstances, with Eatonville and the tales of local
storytellers oft en taking prominence in her texts. Hurston
once said that she had the “map of Dixie” on her tongue, a
trademark implicit throughout much of her literary works.
During her youth, Hurston’s father served three terms
as mayor of Eatonville and was a Baptist minister and car-
penter. Th e death of her mother when she was nine marked
a turning point that redirected her life and that forced
Hurston to fi nd a means of supporting herself when her fa-
ther remarried a woman who did not like her. She landed
a job working for a singer who was touring the South in
H.M.S. Pinafore, with a Gilbert and Sullivan repertory com-
pany. While working for the touring group, Hurston was
teased mercilessly about her Southern accent. When her
employer ‘Miss M-’ got married, Hurston began working
her way through school by sheer determination. First, she
attended high school at nights in Baltimore, studying En-
glish with Dwight O. W. Holmes. She then attended Mor-
gan for two years before transferring to Howard University
(1919–1923). While at Howard, Hurston participated in
Th e Stylus, a literary society that published her fi rst short
story, “John Redding Goes to Sea,” in 1921. Hurston was
beginning to discover the literary potential of a cultural mi-
lieu and the artistry of the folk idiom that would launch a
remarkable career as a creative writer. Hurston’s association
with Th e Stylus, whose membership included professor and
editor of the revolutionary New Negro Alain Leroy Locke,
garnered an invitation to contribute to Opportunity Maga-
zine, a new publication that she credited as “the root” of the
Harlem Renaissance.
In early 1925, Hurston moved to New York City,
where she met Charles S. Johnson, editor of Opportunity,
who published her story “Drenched in Light.” In 1925 and
1926, Hurston submitted the short story “Spunk” and the
play “Color Struck” to Opportunity, and both won prizes.
Th rough Johnson, Hurston met many black writers and re-
connected with the former Morgan dean, William Pickens,
who worked for the NAACP. By November 1926, Hurston
was an editor, along with Langston Hughes and Wallace
Th urman, of the short-lived magazine Fire!!
Aft er arriving in New York, Hurston quickly secured
a job as secretary to writer Fannie Hurst and garnered a
scholarship to Barnard College through the eff orts of Annie
Nathan Meyer. Hurston entered the prestigious universitybelieved conferred good luck on those who possessed it.
Native Americans originally used it as a ritual paint.
Hoodoo has survived to the present. A smattering of
practitioners who gather herbs and roots continue to serve
clients in rural areas. More notable, however, has been the
rise of conjure shops, also known as spiritual supply stores,
which fi rst appeared in the decades following Emancipa-
tion. By the 1930s and 1940s, such shops were common
in urban areas. Instead of herbal curios, their shelves were
fi lled with oils, incenses, bath crystals, and later, magical
aerosol sprays. Along with the consumer-oriented conjure
stores, large manufacturers and distributors of hoodoo sup-
plies appeared, which provided most of the products that
appeared in the shops and frequently conducted direct-to-
consumer mail-order businesses. Spiritual supply shops
and large manufacturers remain a part of many African
American communities today.
See also: Black Folk Culture; Conjure; Hurston, Zora Neale;
Laveau, Marie; Root Doctors
Jeff rey Elton AndersonBibliography
Anderson, Jeff rey Elton. Conjure in African American Society.
Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2007.
Chireau, Yvonne Patricia. Black Magic: Religion and the African
American Conjuring Tradition. Berkeley: University of Cali-
fornia Press, 2003.
Hurston, Zora Neale. “Hoodoo in America.” Journal of American
Folklore 44 (1931):318–417.
Long, Carolyn Morrow. Spiritual Merchants: Religion, Magic, and
Commerce. Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 2001.
Puckett, Newbell Niles. Folk Beliefs of the Southern Negro. Cha-
pel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1926. Reprint,
Montclair: Patterson Smith, 1968.
Hurston, Zora Neale
Zora Neale Hurston (ca. 1901–1960), scholar and novelist,
was a major fi gure of the Harlem Renaissance whose writ-
ing career moved comfortably between the linguistically
rich black vernacular of her Southern upbringing and the
scholarly tone of her anthropological training at the presti-
gious Barnard College. A folklorist and creative writer, Hur-
ston was born in Eatonville, Florida, the fi rst incorporated
all-black town in America. She was the fi ft h of eight chil-
dren born to John Hurston, a mulatto from Macon County,