(1938) was an exhaustive account of her work and
findings. Mules and Men, the first collection of
Florida and Alabama folklore published by an
African-American woman, appeared in 1935.
Hurston’s research was one of the many projects
funded by her patron Charlotte Osgood Mason.
Hurston’s life as an essayist began in 1928 when
she published “HOWITFEELS TOBECOLOREDME.”
The essay appeared in THEWORLDTOMORROW,a
Protestant magazine that had Hurston’s collaborator
and friend Wallace Thurman on staff. Hurston’s sub-
mission was prompted by debts that she, Thurman,
Langston Hughes, and others had incurred in their
optimistic effort to establish the innovative but
short-lived literary magazine Fire!!The essay is a
genuine index of Hurston’s zest for life, a rejection of
those who would practice racial essentialism, and a
declaration of her intent to live beyond the narrow
confines of race. Other essays included the Decem-
ber 1942 “Crazy for This Democracy” and the June
1944 “My Most Humiliating Jim Crow Experience,”
which appeared in Negro Digest.
Hurston published DUSTTRACKS ON AROAD,
her autobiography, in 1942. Howard University
awarded Hurston its Distinguished Alumni Award
in 1943. She returned to Florida in 1950 after an
unfortunate and highly publicized scandal in which
she was alleged to have molested a young boy. She
spent the last decade of her life working in Florida
as a teacher at Lincoln Park Academy in Fort
Pierce, a librarian, and a freelance writer. Just before
her death, she wrote to Harper Brothers to solicit
their interest in her historical novel based on King
Herod. Ernest Hemingway suggested to her that she
buy land on the Cuban Isle of Pines, but she chose
to stay on Merritt Island, where she could write in
quiet. Hurston suffered a stroke in 1959 and died in
a welfare home in Fort Pierce on January 28, 1960.
Her grave was unmarked for decades until writer
Alice Walker located the site and honored Hurston
with a stately gray headstone that read “Zora Neale
Hurston—A Genius of the South.”
It is tragic that Hurston’s impressive achieve-
ments faded into obscurity for years after her death.
The renaissance in Hurston studies began in the
late 1970s and was initiated by Alice Walker, who
claimed Hurston as a powerful literary foremother.
The recovery of Hurston’s legacy and influence con-
tinues. Advances in Hurston scholarship continue,
fueled by sophisticated critical studies, scholarly re-
search groups dedicated to advancing the critical as-
sessment of Hurston’s works and the publications of
comprehensive biographies, a groundbreaking col-
lection of her extensive correspondence, and new
editions of the author’s diverse and captivating
writings.Bibliography
Boyd, Valerie. Wrapped in Rainbows: The Life of Zora
Neale Hurston.New York: Scribner, 2003.
Cooper, Wayne. Claude McKay: Rebel Sojourner in the
Harlem Renaissance.New York: Schocken Books,
1987.
Davis, Thadious M. Nella Larsen, Novelist of the Harlem
Renaissance: A Woman’s Life Unveiled.Baton Rouge:
Louisiana State University Press, 1994.
Hemenway, Robert E. Zora Neale Hurston: A Literary Bi-
ography.Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1977.
Hurston, Zora Neale. Dust Tracks on a Road.New York:
Lippincott, 1942.
Kaplan, Carla. Zora Neale Hurston: A Life in Letters.New
York: Doubleday, 2002.
Kroeger, Brooke. Fannie: The Talent For Success of Writer
Fannie Hurst.New York: Random House, 1999.
Walker, Alice, ed. I Love Myself When I Am Laughing...
A Zora Neale Hurston Reader.New York: The Femi-
nist Press, 1979.
Zora Neale Hurston Papers, James Weldon Johnson Col-
lection, Beinecke Library, Yale University; Alain
Locke Collections, Moorland-Spingarn Research
Center, Howard University; Special Collections,
Fisk University Library; and Special Collections,
University of Florida, Gainesville.Hurston, Zora Neale 265