Zora spent the 1950s in Florida working on Herod the Great.
During the 1950s, Zora continued writing, although her health was failing.
It was even harder on Zora to know that by the mid-1950s all of her books were out of print. With her publishers no longer printing her books, Zora had less income than ever. Despite her failing health, she was forced to work almost until the end of her life.
In June 1956, sixty-five-year-old Zora was hired to work as a librarian at Patrick Air Force Base near Cocoa Beach, Florida. By Zora's standards she kept this job a long time: about a year. However, in 1957 her supervisor fired her, saying she was "too well educated for the job."
Zora's last job may have been the most difficult of all. In February 1958 she was asked to teach English at Lincoln Park Academy, a high school for African American students in Fort Pierce, Florida, where Zora had settled. The sixty-seven-year-old author was assigned to what was considered the worst-behaved homeroom in the school. Zora later reported, "Discipline at Lincoln Park Academy is terrible," and that the students had "the habit of toting knives" to school. Zora improved her pupils' behavior and the students liked and respected her. The job lasted only a short while, though, apparently because she lacked a Florida teaching certificate.
Zora rented her small house in Fort Pierce from a doctor named C. C. Benton. Seeing that she was having trouble taking care of herself, Dr. Benton visited Zora frequently. He treated her ailments and invited her over to his home for dinner every Sunday. It was said that toward the end of Zora's life neighborhood children also visited her almost daily, and that she would tell them folktales.
This 1950s photo of Zora and her Florida friends was among the signed papers rescued by Patrick Duval.
By 1959, though, there were more and more days when Zora was bed' ridden. She could no longer afford her prescription medicines and groceries, so that spring she went on welfare. In October she suffered a stroke. Because she had no money, Zora was soon admitted to the St. Lucie County Welfare Home, a nursing home in Fort Pierce for impoverished black people. She lived at the welfare home for three months. On January 28, 1960, Zora had another stroke. She died the same day at about seven o'clock in the evening. She had turned sixty-nine years old just thirteen days earlier.
At the time of her death Zora hadn't published a book in twelve years and was nearly forgotten as a writer. She didn't leave enough money for her funeral expenses, so people who had known her donated funds to provide her with a proper burial. Her publishers, Lippincott and Scribner, each gave one hundred dollars. Relatives and friends also sent money. But Zora probably would have appreciated one small contribution the most.
Her former Lincoln Park Academy students pooled their pennies and nickels and made a $2.50 donation for Miss Hurston, the elderly woman who had briefly been their teacher.
Painter and printmaker Prentiss Taylor (AKA Baxter Snark) took this 1935 picture of Zora in New York City.
13. "Nothing Is Destructible": The Rebirth of Zora Neale Hurston
IN HER AUTOBIOGRAPHY, Zora wrote that she didn't fear death:
Nothing is destructible; things merely change forms. When the consciousness we know as life ceases, I know that I shall still be part and parcel of the world. I was a part before the sun rolled into shape. I was, when the earth was hurled out from its fiery rim. I shall return with the earth to Father Sun, and still exist in substance when the sun has lost its fire, and disintegrated in infinity to perhaps become a part of the whirling rubble in space. Why fear? The stuff of my being is matter, ever changing, ever moving, but never lost.
For many years, though, it appeared that her books and her reputation as an author were very "destructible." At the time of her death, all of Zora's books were out of print. They were at some libraries, but generally her published works were difficult to find. To make matters worse, a number of her original manuscripts were destroyed because of aterrible mistake.
One evening shortly after Zora died, Deputy Sheriff Patrick Duval was driving past her house in Fort Pierce when he noticed a column of smoke in the backyard. Stopping to investigate, Duval discovered that several people who had been hired to clean out the house were burning a trunkful of Zora's papers. Unaware that she had once been a prominent author, they had assumed that the papers were just old junk. Duval, however, knew that Zora was a writer and so he grabbed a garden hose, doused the flames, and gathered what was left of her papers.
Several original manuscripts, evidently including The Lives of Barney Turk, The Golden Bench of God, and much of Herod the Great, were destroyed, but Duval had saved some of Zora Neale Hurston's other manuscripts. He stored the papers on his porch for more than a year before finding someone who was interested in taking them. The papers, including some that were partially burned, were placed in the collections of the Department of Rare Books and Manuscripts at the University of Florida in Gainesville.
By the early 1970s, Zora's books—especially Their Eyes Were Watching God—were being rediscovered by a new generation of black women authors and teachers. As they read Zora's works, they fell in love with Janie Crawford, Tea Cake, and Zora's other characters. They were astonished by how real Zora's dialogue sounded. They also admired Zora's life story as an author: her refusal to give up despite numerous rejections, her writing book after book despite poverty and illness, her toughness in defending her work against un Just criticism, and her cheerful confidence that her next book would be her best.
Also burned in the fire at Zora's house was this manuscript page from her 1948 novel Seraph on the Suwanee.
The trouble was, for years after her death Zora's books remained hard to find. The new generation of Zora fans combed libraries and secondhand book' shops, searching for her books. When they found copies, they shared them. Sometimes they made photocopies of Their Lyes Were Watching God and other works by Zora for their friends and students.
Then in 1975, Ms. magazine published an article about Zora by Alice Walker, an African American author who later won the Pulitzer Prize for her novel The Color Purple. Titled "In Search of Zora Neale Hurston," Walker's article described her visit to Fort Pierce, Florida, to place a headstone on Zora's grave. Zora got the last laugh about her age, for, like just about everyone else, Alice Walker believed that Zora had been born much later than was actually the case. The headstone reads:
ZORA NEALE HURSTON
"A GENIUS OF THE SOUTH"
1901–1960
NOVELIST, FOLKLORIST
ANTHROPOLOGIST
Two years after the Ms. article, in 1977, Robert Hemenway published a book about Zora's life, Zora Neale Hurston: A Literary Biography. Alice Walker's article and Robert Hemenway's book helped spark a huge Zora revival.
In recent decades all of Zora's previously published books have been reissued, and several of her works, including Mule Bone (coauthored with Langston Hughes) have been published for the first time. Their Lyes Were Watching God has become part of the curriculum in high schools and colleges across the country. As a result, Their Eyes has now sold well over five million copies—more than a thousand times the number sold in Zora's lifetime. In 2005 Oprah Winfrey made a movie of Their Eyes starring Halle Berry, and in 2008 PBS aired a documentary called Zora Neale Hurston: Jump at the Sun. Each year, her hometown of Eatonville hosts the Zora Neale Hurston Festival of the Arts and Humanities, and Fort Pierce holds a Zora Fest.
The "Queen of the Harlem Renaissance" lies buried in an old cemetery in Fort Pierce, Florida, where Zora Neale Hurston died in poverty.
Zora probably would have been pleased but not surprised by all this attention. After all, from the days when she claimed to be the moon's favorite child to the end of her life, Zora Neale Hurston never stopped believing in herself.
Zora won two second prizes in the 1925 Opportunity writing contest, one for her short story "Spunk" and another for her play Color Struck.
Two "Lies" (Folktales) Collected in Florida By Zora Neale Hurston
SIS SNAIL TOOK SICK in
the bed, you know, and she didn't get better so after while she hollered for her husband and she told him, "Honey, I reckon you better go get the doctor for me. I'm so sick and don't look like I'm on the mend."
Brer Snail told her, "All right, I'll go get the doctor for you. Give me time to go get my hat." So Sis Snail rolled in the bed. After seven years she heard a noise at the door and she said, "I know that's my husband with the doctor, and I am so glad! Lord knows I'm so sick. Honey, is that you with the doctor?"
Brer Snail hollered back and told her, "Don't try to rush me! I ain't gone yet." It had took him seven years to get to the door.
THEY RAISE BIG VEGETABLES down around the Everglades. Yes, sir, that's rich land around down there. For instance, my old man planted sweet potatoes one year and when it come time to dig them potatoes, one of them had got so big they had to make a sawmill job out of it. They built a sawmill and put whole crews to work cutting up that big old sweet potato.
And so that year everybody in Florida had houses made out of sweet potato slabs. And what you reckon everybody ate that year? Well, they lived off of potato pone, made out of the sawdust from that great big old tater my old man raised.
Zora Time Line
1891 Zora, the fifth of eight surviving children in the Hurston family, is born in Notasulga, Alabama, on January 15.
1892 The Hurstons settle in the all-black town of Eatonville, Florida.
1897 John Hurston, Zora's father, is elected mayor of Eatonville.
1900 Zora is a star pupil at Eatonville's Hungerford School by this time.
1904 Lucy Potts Hurston, Zora's mother, dies on September 19; Zora is then sent to attend school and live in Jacksonville, Florida.
1905 John Hurston remarries in February but Zora doesn't get along with her stepmother, Mattie Moge Hurston.
1905–12 Mystery period of Zora's life; about all we know is that she sometimes worked as a maid in various Florida towns.
1912–15 Zora lives with various relatives including her brother Bob in Memphis, Tennessee.
1915 Zora goes to work as personal assistant to "Miss M," a singer in a traveling operetta troupe.
1917 Zora leaves Miss M's employ; she settles in Baltimore, where she has an emergency appendectomy and then attends night school and Morgan Academy.
1918 Zora moves to Washington, D.C., where she attends Howard Academy; her father dies in a car-train accident.
1919 Howard Academy awards Zora her high school diploma in May; in the fall, she enrolls in Howard University in Washington, D.C.
1921 Zora appears in print for the first time when the Stylus of Howard University publishes her poem "O Night" and her story "John Redding Goes to Sea."
1924 Opportunity magazine publishes Zora's story "Drenched in Light" in December.
1925 Zora moves to New York City during the heyday of the Harlem Renaissance; she wins awards in Opportunity magazine's writing contest.
1925–27 Zora attends Barnard College and also takes anthropology classes at Columbia University, both in New York City.
1926 Zora helps produce the one and only issue of Fire!! magazine in November.
1927 Zora travels to Florida to collect folklore; on May 19 she marries Herbert Sheen in Florida; in December, Zora begins receiving financial support from "Godmother" Charlotte Mason.
1928–30 Zora collects folklore in the southern United States and in the Bahamas; while on the road she is awarded her college diploma from Barnard, in 1928; she returns to New York having written a rough draft of the folklore manuscript that will become Mules and Men.
1931 In February, Zora fights with Langston Hughes over their play Mule Bone, ending their friendship; in July, Zora and Herbert Sheen's divorce is finalized.
1932 Zora stages her folk musical The Great Day at New York's John Golden Theatre, but it is a box-office failure; Godmother ends her financial support of Zora.
1933 Zora's "The Gilded Six-Bits" is published in the August issue of Story magazine; it leads to contracts from Lippincott for five books.
1934 In May, Zora's first novel, Jonah's Gourd Vine, is published.
1935 In October, Zora's folklore book Mules and Men is published.
1936 While in Haiti, Zora writes Their Eyes Were Watching God in seven weeks; she also begins Tell My Horse, her book about zombies, voodoo, and the folklore of Haiti and Jamaica.
1937 Zora's masterpiece, Their Eyes Were Watching God, is published in September.
193 8 Tell My Horse, Zora's fifth book, is published in October and isn't well received.
1939 In June, Zora marries Albert Price III in Florida; in November her sixth book, Moses, Man of the Mountain, is published.
1941 Zora goes to work for the Hollywood movie studio Paramount, but she can't persuade the company to film any of her books.
1942 In November, Zora's autobiography, Dust Tracks on a Road, is published; it is her final book with Lippincott.
1943 Zora buys the houseboat Wanago and makes it her home; in November her divorce from Albert Price III is finalized.
1944 On January 18, Zora marries again; she and her third husband, James Howell Pitts, are divorced on October 31.
1945 Zora writes Mrs. Doctor, but Lippincott rejects it.
1947 Zora goes to Honduras to search for a "lost city" but spends most of her time there writing her new novel, Seraph on the Suwanee.
1948 Her new publisher, Scribner, issues Seraph on the Suwanee in October; it proves to be Zora's last published book.
1950 Zora's novel The Lives of Barney Turk is rejected by Scribner.
1951 Scribner rejects Zora's novel The Golden Bench of God.
1952 The Pittsburgh Courier hires Zora to cover the Ruby McCollum murder trial.
1955 Herod the Great, which Zora has worked on intensely for several years, is rejected by Scribner.
1958 Zora, whose health is failing, briefly teaches high school English in Fort Pierce, Florida.
1959 In October, Zora suffers a stroke; she moves to the St. Lucie County Welfare Home in Fort Pierce.
1960 On January 28, Zora suffers another stroke and dies; by then she has been largely forgotten as an author.
1975 In March, Alice Walker publishes "In Search of Zora Neale Hurston" in Ms. magazine, helping to launch a Zora revival.
1977 Robert Hemenway's book Zora Neale Hurston: A Literary Biography also helps spark a tremendous amount of renewed interest in Zora's work.
Source Notes
ABBREVIATIONS AND SHORT TITLES USED IN NOTES
ZNH—Zora Neale Hurston
Dust —ZNH's autobiography, Dust Tracks on a Road
Hemenway— Zora Neale Hurston: A Literary Biography by Robert E. Hemenway
Rainbows—Wrapped in Rainbows: The Life of Zora Neale Hurston by Valerie Boyd
Letters—Zora Neale Hurston: A Life in Letters, edited by Carla Kaplan
Speak—Speak, So You Can Speak Again: The Life of Zora Neale Hurston by Lucy Anne Hurston
INTRODUCTION. "ELL SAY MY SAY AND SING MY SONG" page ix "I'll say my say and sing my song": Mules and Men, p. 5.
she believed the moon followed her: Dust, pp. 26–27.
x "the real love affair of my life": Dust, pp. 205–11.
largest royalty check...$943.75: Hemenway, p. 5.
"four pennies": ZNH letter written March 18, 1951, in Letters, pp. 649–50.
[>] Information about the rediscovery of ZNH's work appears in Speak, p. 7.
1. "SERVANTS ARE SERVANTS"
Much of the information about ZNH working as a maid at age fifty-nine comes from Rainbows, pp. 403–5.
[>] "Employed as a maid in a Rivo Alto Island home...,": James Lyons, "Famous Negro Author Working as Maid Here just 'to Live a Little,'" Miami Herald, March 27, 1950.
[>] "One of the nation's most accomplished Negro Women...,": James Lyons, "Successful Author Working as a Maid," St. Louis Post-Dispatch, April 24, 1950.
[>]–4 "All I wanted was a little spending change" and "My working
...": ZNH's March 1950 letter to Burroughs Mitchell, in Letters, p. 627.
2. "THE MOON RAN AFTER ME"
Nearly all of the material for this chapter comes from Dust.
[>] actually born on January 15, 1891...: Letters, p. 773. Another date often given for ZNH's birth is January 7, 1891.
[>] "The ordeal of share-cropping...": Dust, p. 7.
"There were plenty of orange...": Dust, p. 12.
[>] ZNH's childhood belief that the moon followed her and her race with Carrie Roberts to see who the moon liked best are described in Dust, pp. 26–27.
"I was making little stories..." Dust, p. 53.
[>] Grandma Sarah Potts ... thought that Zora...: Dust, pp. 53–54.
some miniature friends...: Dust, pp. 54–58.
"It grew upon me...": Dust, pp. 27–28.
[>] Lucy often said..."travel dust"...: Dust, pp. 22–23
"Don't you want...?" to "turn out to be a mealy-mouthed rag doll...": Dust, 33–34.
[>] "Jump at the sun...": Dust, p. 13.
A highlight of her childhood...: Dust, pp. 34–39.
[>] "Perhaps I shall never...": Dust, p. 38.
[>] Joe Clarke's general store..."lying sessions"...: Dust, pp. 45–51.
"go hide under the house...": ZNH letter of December 3, 1938, reproduced in Letters, pp. 417–18.
3. "IN SORROW'S KITCHEN"
Most of the information in this chapter originated in Dust.
[>]–17 ZNH describes Lucy's death in Dust, pp. 63–69.
Zora! Page 11