Zora Neale Hurston

Zora Neale Hurston was born in Notasulga, Alabama, and grew up in Eatonville, Florida, one of the first all-Black towns in the United States. Her father was a preacher and the town's mayor. After her mother died, she left home young and worked as a maid.

She studied at Howard University and then at Barnard College, where she was the only Black student, and did graduate work in anthropology at Columbia under Franz Boas. In the 1920s she was part of the Harlem Renaissance. She collected Black folklore in the South, Jamaica and Haiti and published it in Mules and Men (1935) and Tell My Horse (1938).

Their Eyes Were Watching God (1937) follows Janie Crawford through three marriages as she searches for love and her own voice. It is written partly in the speech of rural Black Florida and argues that a woman's worth does not depend on a husband. Some Black male writers of the time, including Richard Wright, criticized it for avoiding racial protest.

Her books went out of print, and she died poor in Fort Pierce, Florida, in 1960. Alice Walker's 1975 essay about her helped bring her work back.