A Timeline of Zora Neal Hurston's Life
Zora Hurston was born in 1901, 1902, or 1903 — depending on how old she felt herself to be at the time someone asked.
- 1891? - Born in Notasulga, Alabama and a few years later she Eatonville, Florida where she grew up.
- 1919 - Claims to be 10 years younger than her real age to get an education and attend Howard Prep School in Washington, D.C.
Zora Neale Hurston always wanted to get an education, but for years circumstances conspired against her. Among them: her father stopped paying her school bills; then when she was living with an older brother and his family, she ended up having to help out in the household instead of attending classes.
- 1920 - Receives associate degree from Howard University
- 1921 - Publishes her first story, John Redding Goes to Sea, in Stylus, the campus literary society’s magazine.
- 1925 - Wins second-place awards for Spunk, and a play, Color Struck, in the Opportunity’s literary contest.
- 1925-1927 - Studies Anthropolgy at Barnard College.
Only to reach a wider audience, need she ever write books — because she is a perfect book of entertainment in herself...
- 1926 - Conducts field work for Franz Boas in Harlem.
- 1927 - Collects folklore in Florida.
- 1934 - Establishes a school of dramatic arts “based on pure Negro expression.”
- 1935 - Begins to study for a Ph.D in anthropology at Columbia University on a fellowship from the Rosenwald Foundation.
- 1936 - Awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship to study West Indian obeah practices.
- 1937 - Writes Their Eyes Were Watching God in seven weeks while in Haiti". The novel is published the same year.
- 1939 - Publishes Moses, Man of the Mountain.
- 1942 - Works as a story consultant at Paramount Pictures and publishes Dust Tracks on a Road.
- 1959 - Suffers a stroke.
- 1961 - Dies in the St. Lucie County Welfare Home and is buried in an unmaked grave.
And although Zora wasn't egotistical, what she thought, she thought; and generally what she thought, she said.
- 1975 - Alice Walker publishes, In Search of Zora Neale Hurston and the author's works are rediscovered by new generations.
It was impossible for me to cry when I saw the field full of weeds where Zora is. Partly this is because I have come to know Zora through her books and she was not a teary sort of person herself; but partly too, it is because there is a point at which even grief feels absurd. And at this point, laughter gushes up to retrieve sanity.
- 2018 - Barracoon, the story of the last survivor or the slave trade, is published nine decades after it is written. The literature on the African slave trade, Hurston wrote, had endless "words from the seller, but not one word from the sold."
Sometimes, I feel discriminated against, but it does not make me angry. It merely astonishes me. How can any deny themselves the pleasure of my company? It's beyond me.