African-American History

Zora Neale Hurston was born in Eatonville, FL on January 7,1891. Throughout her life, and right up until her death in the 1960s, Hurston was an anthropologist, dramatist, essayist, folklorist, novelist,  and autobiographer. 

Having made trips to Haiti and Jamaica, Hurston was the first African-American to both collect and publish African American and African Caribbean folklore. Hurston is well known for her attitude of defiant confidence and refusal to be cast as the wounded Black American. 

Hurston's most famous novel, Their Eyes Were Watching God, was written in 1937. Her autobiographical work, Dust Tracks on a Road, was written in 1942. Toward the end of her life, Hurston was a drama instructor at the North Carolina College for Negroes in Durham. 

At the time of her death, Zora Neale Hurston was a pauper and was buried in an unmarked grave. On August 15, 1973, Alice Walker embarked upon a quest to find and mark the grave of her literary idol. Through cunning, lies and bribes, her journey proved to be successful, and though extremely difficult to identify, Alice Walker was able to, with the assistance of the local funeral directors, finally find and mark the grave. A headstone now marks the grave of this great humanist. It reads: