Zora Neale Hurston

Black History Spotlight: Day #23

Contribution: An American author, anthropologist, and filmmaker.

Age: 69 (1891 - 1960)

Mini Bio:

Zora Neale Hurston is a famous author who wrote novels including “Their Eyes Were Watching God,” which inspired a movie produced by Oprah Winfrey. Every year a week-long festival in Eatonville celebrates Zora’s legacy. Many people don’t know that Zora was also a pioneering anthropologist. Anthropology is the science of the origins and development of human beings and their cultures. Zora was the first African American woman to graduate from Barnard College in New York City, in 1928. She studied with a teacher named Franz Boas, who is now called the father of American anthropology.

Zora was born in Alabama, but she grew up in Eatonville, Florida, which she always called her hometown.
In her writing, Zora used the skills she learned studying anthropology.
In 1936 and 1937, Zora received a grant to study the people of Jamaica and Haiti.
She wrote all about her adventures in a book called “Tell My Horse: Voodoo and Life in Jamaica and Haiti” (1938).
Zora even wrote about the subject of zombies in her book.