Pictures In History

Zora Hurston; Rochelle Harris; Gabriel Brown; Eatonville, FLA. June 1935. Photo by Alan Lomax. Source: (Library of Congress).

In 1973, Alice Walker went on a quest to find Zora Neale Hurston’s grave and write about it. This, along with a 1980 biography of the Harlem Renaissance writer restored interest in Hurston. Today, she is best known for her novel Their Eyes Were Watching God, a work based significantly in Eatonville, Florida, the town where she did significant ethnographic field work. Here, she documented songs, stories, traditions, histories, and images of the residents.

She Lived In Eatonville As A Child

Although Hurston was born in Alabama, by the time she was a year old, her family moved to Eatonville, which had received its charter on August 18, 1886. After the signing of the Emancipation Proclamation, Joe Clarke, a black man, was elected the town marshal of Maitland, Florida. The following year, Clarke decided to form an all-black town, which was named Eatonville, after Josiah Eaton, a white army captain living in Maitland. Eaton supported Clarke in the endeavor, as did Lewis Lawrence, a white philanthropist from New York City. Lawrence bought 10 acres from Josiah Eaton, which he donated to the town to build a church. He later sold 12 additional acres to help establish the town. Clarke bought 100 additional acres from the white residents of Maitland; he then resold small lots to black settlers, and the town got its start with a church, a town hall, and 27 black men. Joe Clarke also ran a store in Eatonville, which became the hub of the town. Hurston’s father, John Hurston served as the pastor of the Macedonian Baptist Church and was mayor of the town for three terms.

Children playing. Photos taken during Lomax-Hurston-Barnicle recording expedition. Source: (Library of Congress).

She Studied Anthropology

When Hurston was young, her mother died, and she was sent to Jacksonville. Her father remarried, and although Hurston returned to Eatonville for a time, she got into a fight with her stepmother and left the town again. After this, Hurston worked in a number of service jobs, and eventually enrolled in Morgan Academy to finish high school, claiming she was 16, although she was 10 years older. She received an associate degree from Howard University before heading to Barnard College to study with Franz Boas, who was the leading anthropologist at that time.

Fieldwork In Eatonville

She completed her first serious fieldwork in Eatonville, although she did not find it easy, since she wasn’t the same person she had been when she left. Her speech was affected by her time at Barnard, and so she was unable to embed herself in the community, and no one wanted to share their stories; those she did collect were disappointing.

Hurston with the people of Eatonville. Source: (Library of Congress).

Collecting Folklore For The Second Time

When she returned to New York, she found a new patron in Charlotte Osgood Mason, a wealthy philanthropist. Although she did find support, that support was conditional, as Mason decided how and when Hurston’s research became public, and Mason had particular expectations of how the black people in Hurston’s writing should live and behave. On this second trip to Eatonville, she became friends with Big Sweet, a woman who introduced her to the best storytellers and also kept her out of trouble. She was able to collect top-quality folklore this time around.

Publishing Her Fieldwork

Hurston went to New Orleans after her time in Eatonville, where she studied practices like hoodoo and voodoo. To gain the trust of devotees, she immersed herself by lying naked near an altar for 69 hours, abstaining from eating for days, and learning how to communicate with the spirits.

Her fieldwork was first published in the 1931 Journal of American Folklore. After it was published, she signed a deal to publish her ethnography, Of Mules and Men, which included her first-hand research and reflections.

Working With The WPA

She won a Guggenheim fellowship to study magic in Jamaica and Haiti in 1936, and while she was living in Haiti, she wrote Their Eyes Were Watching God. After returning to America, in 1938, she joined the Federal Writers’ Project of the WPA. During this time, as a folklorist, she gathered songs, stories, traditions, and histories of the people in Florida.