Zora Neale Hurston

1. ZoraNeale Hurston Kati Daniels 3/15/11

2. Early Life: • Zora Neale Hurston was born on January 7, 1891 in Notasulga, Alabama to John & Lucy Ann Hurston. • Her family moved to Eatonville, the first all-black town when Zora was three. • In 1904, Zora's mother died and her father remarried almost immediately. • She spent the remainder of her childhood in Eatonville, and describes the experience of growing up in Eatonville in her 1928 essay "How It Feels to Be Colored Me".

3. Zora’s father & stepmother sent her to boarding school & then eventually she was expelled because they stopped paying her tuition.

4. College Life: • In 1918, Hurston began undergraduate studies at Howard University. She left Howard in 1924 & in 1925 was offered a scholarship to Barnard College.

5. Hurston received her B.A. in anthropology in 1927. • After graduating from Barnard, Hurston spent two years as a graduate student in anthropology at Columbia University.

6. Adulthood: • Hurston traveled in the Caribbean & the American South & immersed herself in local cultural practices to conduct her anthropological research.

7. In 1927 she married Herbert Sheen, a jazz musician and former classmate at Howard who would later become a physician, but the marriage ended in 1931.

8. She married Albert Price, a 23-yr. old fellow WPA employee but their marriage ended after a few months. • In 1956 Hurston was bestowed the Bethune-Cookman College Award for Education and Human Relations in recognition of her vast achievements, and the English Department at Bethune-Cookman College remains dedicated to preserving her cultural legacy

9. In 1948, Hurston was falsely accused of molesting a ten-year-old boy, and although the case was dismissed after Hurston presented evidence that she was in Honduras when the crime supposedly occurred in the U.S., her personal life was seriously disrupted by the scandal.

10. Death: • During a period of financial and medical difficulties, Hurston was forced to enter St. Lucie County Welfare Home, where she suffered a stroke and died of hypertensive heart disease. She was buried in an unmarked grave in the Garden of Heavenly Rest cemetery in Fort Pierce.