Moses, Man of the Mountain

by Zora Neale Hurston

  September 1927: First visits Mrs. Rufus Osgood Mason, seeking patronage.

  October 1927: Publishes an account of the black settlement at St. Augustine, Florida, in the Journal of Negro History; also in this issue: “Cudjo’s Own Story of the Last African Slaver.”

  December 1927: Signs a contract with Mason, enabling her to return to the South to collect folklore.

  1928: Satirized as “Sweetie Mae Carr” in Wallace Thurman’s novel about the Harlem Renaissance Infants of the Spring; receives a bachelor of arts degree from Barnard.

  January 1928: Relations with Sheen break off.

  May 1928: Publishes “How It Feels to Be Colored Me” in the World Tomorrow.

  1930–32: Organizes the field notes that become Mules and Men.

  May–June 1930: Works on the play Mule Bone with Langston Hughes.

  1931: Publishes “Hoodoo in America” in the Journal of American Folklore.

  February 1931: Breaks with Langston Hughes over the authorship of Mule Bone.

  July 7, 1931: Divorces Sheen.

  September 1931: Writes for a theatrical revue called Fast and Furious.

  January 1932: Writes and stages a theatrical revue called The Great Day, first performed on January 10 on Broadway at the John Golden Theatre; works with the creative literature department of Rollins College, Winter Park, Florida, to produce a concert program of Negro music.

  1933: Writes “The Fiery Chariot.”

  January 1933: Stages From Sun to Sun (a version of Great Day) at Rollins College.

  August 1933: Publishes “The Gilded Six-Bits” in Story.

  1934: Publishes six essays in Nancy Cunard’s anthology, Negro.

  January 1934: Goes to Bethune-Cookman College to establish a school of dramatic arts “based on pure Negro expression.”

  May 1934: Publishes Jonah’s Gourd Vine, originally titled Big Nigger; it is a Book-of-the-Month Club selection.

  September 1934: Publishes “The Fire and the Cloud” in the Challenge.

  November 1934: Singing Steel (a version of Great Day) performed in Chicago.

  January 1935: Makes an abortive attempt to study for a Ph.D in anthropology at Columbia University on a fellowship from the Rosenwald Foundation. In fact, she seldom attends classes.

  August 1935: Joins the WPA Federal Theatre Project as a “dramatic coach.”

  October 1935: Mules and Men published.

  March 1936: Awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship to study West Indian Obeah practices.

  April–September 1936: In Jamaica.

  September–March 1937: In Haiti; writes Their Eyes Were Watching God in seven weeks.

  May 1937: Returns to Haiti on a renewed Guggenheim.

  September 1937: Returns to the United States; Their Eyes Were Watching God published, September 18.

  February–March 1938.: Writes Tell My Horse; it is published the same year.

  April 1938: Joins the Federal Writers Project in Florida to work on The Florida Negro.

  1939: Publishes “Now Take Noses” in Cordially Yours.

  June 1939: Receives an honorary Doctor of Letters degree from Morgan State College.

  June 27, 1939: Marries Albert Price III in Florida.

  Summer 1939: Hired as a drama instructor by North Carolina College for Negroes at Durham; meets Paul Green, professor of drama, at the University of North Carolina.

  November 1939: Moses, Man of the Mountain published.

  February 1940: Files for divorce from Price, though the two are reconciled briefly.

  Summer 1940: Makes a folklore-collecting trip to South Carolina.

  Spring–July 1941: Writes Dust Tracks on a Road.

  July 1941: Publishes “Cock Robin, Beale Street” in the Southern Literary Messenger.

  October 1941–January 1942: Works as a story consultant at Paramount Pictures.

  July 1942: Publishes “Story in Harlem Slang” in the American Mercury.

  September 5, 1942: Publishes a profile of Lawrence Silas in the Saturday Evening Post.

  November 1942: Dust Tracks on a Road published.

  February 1943: Awarded the Anisfield-Wolf Book Award in Race Relations for Dust Tracks; on the cover of the Saturday Review.

  March 1943: Receives Howard University’s Distinguished Alumni Award.

  May 1943: Publishes “The ‘Pet Negro’ Syndrome” in the American Mercury.

  November 1943: Divorce from Price granted.

  June 1944: Publishes “My Most Humiliating Jim Crow Experience” in the Negro Digest.

  1945: Writes Mrs. Doctor; it is rejected by Lippincott.

  March 1945: Publishes “The Rise of the Begging Joints” in the American Mercury.

  December 1945: Publishes “Crazy for This Democracy” in the Negro Digest.

  1947: Publishes a review of Robert Tallant’s Voodoo in New Orleans in the Journal of American Folklore.

  May 1947: Goes to British Honduras to research black communities in Central America; writes Seraph on the Suwanee; stays in Honduras until March 1948.

  September 1948: Falsely accused of molesting a ten-year-old boy and arrested; case finally dismissed in March 1949.

  October 1948: Seraph on the Suwanee published.

  March 1950: Publishes “Conscience of the Court” in the Saturday Evening Post, while working as a maid in Rivo Island, Florida.

  April 1950: Publishes “What White Publishers Won’t Print” in the Saturday Evening Post.

  November 1950: Publishes “I Saw Negro Votes Peddled” in the American Legion magazine.

  Winter 1950–51: Moves to Belle Glade, Florida.

  June 1951: Publishes “Why the Negro Won’t Buy Communism” in the American Legion magazine.

  December 8, 1951: Publishes “A Negro Voter Sizes Up Taft” in the Saturday Evening Post.

  1952: Hired by the Pittsburgh Courier to cover the Ruby McCollum case.

  May 1956: Receives an award for “education and human relations” at Bethune-Cookman College.

  June 1956: Works as a librarian at Patrick Air Force Base in Florida; fired in 1957.

  1957–59: Writes a column on “Hoodoo and Black Magic” for the Fort Pierce Chronicle.

  1958: Works as a substitute teacher at Lincoln Park Academy, Fort Pierce.

  Early 1959: Suffers a stroke.

  October 1959: Forced to enter the St. Lucie County Welfare Home.

  January 28, 1960: Dies in the St. Lucie County Welfare Home of “hypertensive heart disease” buried in an unmarked grave in the Garden of Heavenly Rest, Fort Pierce.

  August 1973: Alice Walker discovers and marks Hurston’s grave.

  March 1975: Walker publishes “In Search of Zora Neale Hurston,” in Ms., launching a Hurston revival.

  About the Author

  ZORA NEALE HURSTON (1891–1960) was a novelist, folklorist, and anthropologist whose fictional and factual accounts of black heritage remain unparalleled. Her many books include Dust Tracks on a Road, Their Eyes Were Watching God, Jonah’s Gourd Vine, Seraph on the Suwanee, Mules and Men, Tell My Horse, and Every Tongue Got to Confess.

  WWW.ZORANEALEHURSTON.COM

  Visit www.AuthorTracker.com for exclusive information on your favorite HarperCollins author.

  Copyright

  MOSES, MAN OF THE MOUNTAIN. Copyright © 1939 by Zora Neale Hurston. Copyright renewed 1967 by John C. Hurston and Joel Hurston. Afterword, Selected Bibliography, and Chronology copyright © 1990 by Henry Louis Gates, Jr. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.

  The Library
of Congress has catalogued the previous edition as follows:

  Hurston, Zora Neale.

  Moses, man of the mountain / by Zora Neale Hurston.—1st Harper Perennial ed.

  p. cm.

  ISBN 0-06-091994-9 (pbk.)

  1. Moses (Biblical leader)—Fiction. 2. Bible. O.T.—History of biblical events—Fiction. I. Title.

  PS3515.U789M6 1991 90-55502

  813'.52—dc20

  EPub Edition © March 2010 ISBN: 978-0-06-201056-8

  10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

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  * The priests in selecting the young bull for worship always pretended that it had appeared in their midst mysteriously, by divine guidance. No one was supposed to know anything about its origin. Divine origin was claimed for it.

  * A multitude of mixed-blood people marched out of Egypt with the Hebrews.