50 Fun Facts About Zora Neale Hurston

In which year was Their Eyes Were Watching God, Hurston's most popular novel, published?

Time later named it one of the 100 best English-language novels since 1923.

In which Alabama town was Hurston born in 1891?

Its name comes from Creek words meaning many teeth; her father's family came from there.

Eatonville, where Hurston grew up, was incorporated as an all-Black town in which year?

It was one of the first such towns in the US; Hurston sometimes claimed it as her birthplace.

What office did Hurston's father John win in Eatonville in 1897?

A Baptist preacher, he later led the town's largest church, Macedonia Missionary Baptist.

Hurston was the fifth of how many children?

All four of her grandparents had been born into slavery; her mother was a schoolteacher.

To qualify for free high school in 1917, Hurston began claiming which year as her birth year?

She was 26 at the time; the false date even ended up on her gravestone.

Hurston finished high school at Morgan Academy in which city?

The school is now Morgan State University; she graduated in 1918 and went on to Howard.

Which school's student newspaper, The Hilltop, did Hurston co-found?

She earned an associate degree there in 1920 and paid her way working as a manicurist.

Which sorority, founded by and for Black women, did Hurston join in college?

She was also the first in her family to attend college.

In 1925 Hurston became the first African American admitted to which women's college?

Trustee Annie Nathan Meyer arranged the scholarship; Hurston took a B.A. in anthropology in 1928.

Under which Columbia anthropologist did Hurston study and conduct research?

The 'Father of American Anthropology' was a cultural relativist; she also worked with Ruth Benedict and Margaret Mead.

Which white patron paid Hurston $200 a month for Southern research from 1927 to 1932?

In return she demanded all the folklore and hoodoo material Hurston collected; she also backed Langston Hughes.

Which 1926 magazine did Hurston produce with Wallace Thurman and other young Harlem writers?

The group called itself the Niggerati; the magazine lasted one issue.

Hurston's story 'Sweat', about the washerwoman Delia and her husband Sykes, features which animal?

Sykes uses her fear of snakes against her; the story ran in the single issue of Fire!!

Which Hurston story was selected for Alain Locke's landmark 1925 anthology The New Negro?

It came just before she entered Barnard, when the Harlem Renaissance was at its height.

Hurston's 1928 essay about growing up in Eatonville is titled what?

It says she felt most colored when thrown against a sharp white background, as in Jacksonville.

Hurston's 1935 collection of African-American folklore from North Florida is titled what?

She gathered 70 tales on the Florida trip and hoodoo material in New Orleans, adding 'Now you are going to hear lies above suspicion'.

Mules and Men draws on trips to Eatonville, Polk County and which city?

The Louisiana material covers her initiation into hoodoo practice.

What was the title of Hurston's 1934 debut novel?

It follows the philandering preacher John Pearson and his wife Lucy, and was written in about three months.

Hurston wrote Their Eyes Were Watching God in which country, in seven weeks?

She was there on a Guggenheim Fellowship researching Vodou for Tell My Horse.

Who is the protagonist of Their Eyes Were Watching God?

She returns to Eatonville in her forties and tells her story, starting with a pear tree and a kiss.

What is the nickname of Janie's third husband, Vergible Woods?

A drifter and gambler who plays guitar, he was inspired by Hurston's lover Percy Punter.

Which real 1928 disaster strikes in Their Eyes Were Watching God?

Tea Cake is bitten by a dog while saving Janie from drowning and develops rabies.

Janie's second husband Joe Starks is elected to what position in Eatonville?

He buys land, opens a general store and expects Janie to be defined by her marriage to him.

Which African-American novelist panned Hurston's 1937 novel as carrying 'no theme, no message'?

Wright wrote in explicitly political terms; Hurston in turn attacked his communism in a 1938 review.

Who played the lead in the 2005 television film of Their Eyes Were Watching God?

Oprah Winfrey's Harpo produced it for ABC, with Michael Ealy as Tea Cake.

Tell My Horse (1938) documents Hurston's research on rituals in Jamaica and which other country?

Its fourth chapter describes the Nine Night ritual she joined in St Thomas, Jamaica.

Which foundation funded Hurston's 1936–37 Caribbean research?

She had earlier been backed by the American Folklore Society with grants totalling $1,400.

Hurston's 1939 novel retells which biblical book from an African-American perspective?

Moses, Man of the Mountain came out as she joined the drama department at North Carolina College for Negroes.

Hurston's last published novel, Seraph on the Suwanee (1948), is unusual for featuring mainly what?

She wrote much of it in Honduras and wanted to show the shared culture of Southern Blacks and whites.

From 1947 to 1948 Hurston lived in which Central American country, hoping to find Mayan ruins?

She stayed in Puerto Cortés and was fascinated by the Garifuna and Miskito creole cultures.

Hurston's 1942 autobiography is titled what?

Alice Walker saw its fragmentary approach as a subversion of the form; its honesty has been questioned.

With whom did Hurston write the 1930 play Mule Bone, ending their friendship?

The comedy was not staged until 1991, at the Lincoln Center Theater.

In which year was Mule Bone finally staged?

The Lincoln Center Theater produced it 61 years after it was written.

Hurston interviewed Cudjoe Lewis, the last known survivor of which illegal slave ship?

It entered the US in 1860; she recorded the only known film footage of him.

Hurston's book about Cudjoe Lewis, Barracoon, was finally published in which year?

Publishers rejected the 1931 manuscript for its dialect; barracoon is Spanish for the barracks where captives were held.

What does the word barracoon mean?

Captured Africans were held there temporarily before being shipped abroad.

Cudjoe Lewis lived in which Alabama community founded by survivors of his slave ship?

Now a historic district, it joined the National Register of Historic Places in 2012.

Hurston's folk revue The Great Day premiered in January 1932 at which New York venue?

Despite good reviews it had one performance and left her $600 in debt.

In 1952 Hurston covered the murder trial of Ruby McCollum for which newspaper?

She saw the case as exposing 'paramour rights'; William Bradford Huie later turned it into a bestseller.

Hurston was fired from a Pan American library job in 1957 for being what?

She worked at Patrick Air Force Base; she later took jobs as a substitute teacher and maid.

Hurston died in 1960 in which Florida city, where she is buried?

She had suffered a stroke in the St Lucie County Welfare Home and died of hypertensive heart disease.

After Hurston's death, who saved her papers from a yardman's bonfire?

Patrick DuVal put the fire out and kept the papers on his porch for two years; most went to the University of Florida.

Which writer's 1975 Ms. magazine article revived interest in Hurston's work?

'In Search of Zora Neale Hurston' was later retitled 'Looking for Zora'.

The headstone placed on Hurston's grave in 1973 quotes 'A Genius of the South' from whose poem?

It comes from 'Georgia Dusk' in Cane; the stone also repeats her false 1901 birth year.

Hurston's folktale manuscript Every Tongue Got to Confess was found in which archive?

It sat among the papers of anthropologist William Duncan Strong and was published in 2001.

Hurston's long-unpublished biography of which ancient ruler was finally published in 2025?

The University of Florida held the manuscript alongside Seraph on the Suwanee; Amistad published The Life of Herod the Great in January 2025.

In 1934 Hurston founded a school of dramatic arts at which Florida college?

It was to be based on 'pure Negro expression'; the college gave her an award in 1956.

What was Hurston's political affiliation?

She admired Robert Taft, opposed the New Deal and even criticised the Brown v. Board ruling.

For 1939–40 Hurston joined the drama department of the North Carolina College for Negroes in which city?

She also sat in unofficially on Paul Green's classes at the still-segregated UNC as a 'secret student'.