Zora Neale Hurston

Zora Neale Hurston

by Jenna Taylor, Central and South FL Trail Program Manager

Portrait of Zora Neale Hurston. April 3, 1938 by photographer, Van Vechten C. Photo courtesy of the Library of Congress

sensible for me to choose familiar ground,” she wrote in Mules and Men. Though largely overlooked as an environmentalist, Zora’s appreciation and care of the landscape shows through her writing. “I was only happy in the woods, and when the ecstatic Florida springtime came strolling from the sea, trance-glorifying the world with its aura.” (The Inside Light by Deborah Plant). Through her works, Zora shows the wildness of Florida and the ability to live off the land. She wrote about the migrant farm workers, lived on a shrimping boat, sailed her houseboats up and down the rivers all while inspiring and captivating others. Three Florida cities—Eatonville, Belle Glade and Fort Pierce, provided the backdrop of her life. Just miles from the Florida Trail, these locations offer unique historic value and trails of their own to remind us of Florida as it was through the eyes of Zora. Visiting those places today, whether while hiking on the Florida Trail, or by taking a day trip, one can ponder how we almost forgot Zora and the stories she tried to tell.

EATONVILLE Just outside of Orlando and 15 miles from

HOW FLORIDA ALMOST FORGOT “THE GENIUS OF THE SOUTH”

“Janie saw her life like a great tree in leaf with the things suffered, things enjoyed, things done and undone.” Their Eyes Were Watching God

She stands like a tree in Florida’s history. Sometimes seen, sometimes forgotten. She bloomed, withered and almost disappeared until her great roots in this state created a legacy that stands tall today. Zora Neale Hurston, author of tales full of Florida history and imagery such as, Their Eyes Were Watching God and Dirt Tracks on a Dust Road, lived and died here. Though 28 Florida Trail Association she left several times to fulfill her own wish to, “have a busy life, a just mind and a timely death,” she always found herself back on Florida soil. She spent time immersing herself in the Harlem Renaissance, experiencing and studying voodoo in Jamaica and Haiti on a Guggenheim Fellowship or simply writing in and about Florida. “I realized I was new myself, so it looked FloridaTrail.org Florida Trail access points, quietly sits Eatonville. A town of just over 2,400 residents, it holds a significant place in Florida history. Founded in 1887, Eatonville was the first town successfully established by African American freedmen in the United States. According to the James Madison Institute, while over 400 black towns had been established, none were legally recognized until Eatonville and only about 150 communities went on to receive the rights of a municipality. Of those, only 12 remain today. Zora considered this place home and

These locations in Fort Pierce, take visitors through the final two years of Zora’s life.

wrote about it in Their Eyes Were Watching God and Mules and Men. In her autobiography, she claimed Eatonville to be her birthplace. Both of her parents were former slaves and moved to Eatonville when Zora was very young. Her father, John Hurston, became one of the first mayors of the city and later the minister of Macedonia Missionary Baptist Church, which still exists today. While she moved to Jacksonville and the Northeast for school, it was Eatonville that was the inspiration for one of her first works, How It Feels to Be Colored Me. By the time of her death, her fame had been forgotten by most the residents of Eatonville. It wasn’t until the 1980’s that she was brought back to the forefront of everyone in Eatonville’s minds. A five-lane highway was proposed to go straight through the town, replacing the quiet two lane road. As a response, the town rallied around Zora’s memory and planned the first “Zora!” Festival. Today, Zora! is a multi-day, multi-disciplinary, intergenerational event composed of public talks, museum exhibitions, theatrical productions, arts education programming and a three-day outdoor festival of the arts. In 2021, this event will take place in person FOLKLORIST “There are years that ask questions and years that answer.” - Their Eyes Were Watching God Zora knew that the only way to move forward was to protect the past. She was a folklorist. After studying at Barnard College in New York where she was their first black graduate under the father of American anthropology, Frank Boass, she was dispatched into the field. She traveled throughout the 20s and 30s in African American communities throughout the Southern United States and Caribbean collecting stories, music and oral poetry. She received a Guggenheim Fellowship Elizabeth Barnicle scholarship/ award to document African American song traditions. As they visited turpentine, railroad and sawmill camps, they recorded in Belle Glade, Chosen and Eatonville. Some of this work she published in “Mules and Men” and most of the work she helped collect, along with recordings of her own performances which can be found online through the American Folklife Center.

Zora Neale Hurston and an unidentified man probably at a recording site, Belle Glade, Florida. Belle Glade Florida, 1935. Photo courtesy of the Library of Congress

Visit the mosaic that now covers Alfred Hair’s gravesite and more Alfred Hair’s grave as first discovered by Gary Monroe, on this tour of the Highwaymen’s story in Fort Pierce. author of The Highwaymen: Florida’s African American “They weren’t forgotten, they were invisible,” Landscape Painters. Photo provided by Monroe. Gary Monroe, Author and Highwaymen historian with the artist, A.E. “Beanie” Backus, mentor to the Highwaymen. Her final writing was done for the Fort Pierce Chronicle where she produced a column. At the time of her death, she was living in FLORIDA HIGHWAYMEN The Florida Highwaymen share a common home with Zora— and virtually throughout the entire month of January, culminating on Fort Pierce. Less than a mile from where Zora has been laid January 30th and 31st with the outdoor festival. to rest, 26 names are inscribed on a wall. They represent the While in town, stroll down Kennedy Blvd. and be sure to visit names of another forgotten group of men and one woman who the Zora Neale Hurston National Museum of Fine Arts in Eatonville until 2004, were only known by locals who remembered them which features artists of African descent. Stop at the St. Lawrence sitting along US-1, trunks open for business. African Methodist Episcopal Church where Zora attended and the According to Monroe, “After World War 2, people were Matilda Moseleye House Museum, her childhood best friend’s home. starting fresh. They (military members) remembered being in Walking tours and maps are available at the Zora Neale Hurston South Florida as 18 year olds and wanted to return.” These National Museum of Fine Arts. families were sold dreams of owning a “piece of paradise” BELLE GLADE “To Janie’s strange eyes, everything in the Everglades was big and new. Big Lake Okeechobee, big beans, big cane, big weeds, big everything. Weeds that did well to grow waist high up the state were eight and often ten feet tall down there. Ground so rich that everything went wild.” – Their Eyes Were Watching God Florida home by companies such as General Development Corporation and thereby, moved to the state, sight unseen. In their new homes, they needed art and the Highwaymen filled that need. Going door to door, these self-taught artists sold beautiful Florida landscape oil paintings, some with the paint still drying. For only $25, these young families could afford this beauty to remind them of the nature they longed to see Zora moved to Belle Glade, a stop along the Florida Trail in 1950. in moving to Florida. “It was God-given landscape and they There, she befriended Sarah Lee Creech, who served with her on sold paintings in astonishing numbers,” says Monroe, “They the Belle Glade Inter-Racial Council. Creech had noticed a lack of took extreme pride in their work. All of the art was done in the diverse toys for black children. With Zora’s guidance, Creech went moment and genuinely.” on to create the Sarah Lee doll. Zora championed it and garnered Monroe has spent decades studying the art and artists. support among the African American community and leaders. When asked about the most iconic site to see when visiting In 1951, Eleanor Roosevelt held a reception for the Sara Lee doll the Fort Pierce Highwaymen Trail, Monroe suggested Pine with prominent figures of the time. The Sara Lee became the first Grove Cemetery: the grave of Alfred Hair. Though it has black baby doll to be mass produced and marketed nationally and since been redone, when Monroe first found the maker, it was was featured in the 1951 Sears Christmas catalogue. Zora’s swift broken. Now Fort Pierce celebrates the Highwayinfluence was not uncommon and she used it throughout her career men with an annual festival in the spring and to advocate for other projects and causes she believed in. showcases their paintings at the A.E. Backus FORT PIERCE town, there is a strong chance you will Zora moved to Fort Pierce for the final two years of her life and little find artists who are still carrying on the is known about the time she spent along the coast. She taught at craft, painting Lincoln Park Academy, which was an all-black school at the time, but alongside her notoriety went undetected. It was recorded that she spent time the road. Museum and Gallery. If you drive through 30 Florida Trail Association FloridaTrail.org

FLORIDA’S FORGOTTEN HURRICANE Through the screaming wind they heard things crashing and things hurtling and dashing with unbelievable velocity…And the lake got madder and madder with only its dikes between them and him.- Their Eyes Were Watching God

The hurricane described in “Their Eyes Were Watching

God,” was a true event in 1928. Though she was not there at the time, Zora used the stories she collected to create Janie’s memories of the event. An estimated 12,000 were injured, 32,414 buildings were destroyed or damaged and 2,500 Floridians died in the storm, long before warning systems were in place. Nearly 700 of those victims were black residents. Their remains were placed in an unmarked mass grave in West Palm Beach that was forgotten for many years. A historical marker was finally added in 2003. Prior to the storm, a small dike had been built at the south end of Lake Okeechobee but it failed to hold back the waters and many homes simply floated away. As a result, in 1929 President Hoover visited the community and construction on the dike currently hosting the Lake Okeechobee Scenic

Trail, a part of the Florida Trail, began. During her anthropological recording trips, Zora recorded, “God Rode on a Mighty Storm.” The lines of this haunting song tell us what it might have been like that day. social service housing. In 1960, she died penniless, with her name spelled wrong on her death certificate. Residents of the Lincoln Park Community took up a collection to have her buried at the Garden of Heavenly Rest Cemetery. It sat unmarked until 1972, when Alice Walker, author of The Color Purple, found where Zora had been buried and had a marker made that reads, “A Genius of the South.” A week after her death, a fire burned at the 648 square foot home Zora had lived in. A deputy, Patrick Duval, stopped and realized the fire seemed to have been intentional, as it was Zora’s work fueling the flames. He acted quickly, trying to save as much as he could. Duval had met Zora when his class traveled to Daytona to Bethune-Cookman college. She briefly taught there while living aboard her houseboat, Wanago, purchased with her Anisfield-Wolf Book Award winnings for Dust Tracks on a Dirt Road. Despite his efforts, much of her work was lost. The documents that were salvaged have been used to piece together some of Zora’s final years and understand the final piece she was working on, Herold the Great, which remains unpublished. Zora’s gravesite and 7 other locations can be visited on the Fort Pierce, “Dust Tracks Heritage Trail.” In 1991, a St. Lucie County library was named in her honor and houses a collection of her works and eight portraits by Ade Rossman entitled the “Zora Art Series.” University of Florida Archives. Severe flooding at the Everglades Experiment Station at Belle Glade, Florida, caused by the 1928 hurricane. 1928. Sept. 9. Photo Courtesy of the University Archives Photograph Collection at http://ufdc.ufl.edu/UF00034353/00001

In that storm, oh in that storm; Lord, somebody got drownded in the storm. Oh, in that storm, in that storm, oh, in that storm, Lord, somebody got drownded in that storm. Over in Pahokee, Families rushed out at the door, Sombody’s poor mother

Have never been seen anymore

Florida Trail Association is a Proud Partner with Warrior Expeditions

CLOSING Warrior Expeditions supports combat veterans transitioning from Zora Neale Hurston’s legacy is just one story with which the Florida their military service by thru-hiking America’s National Scenic Trails. Trail intersects as it winds through the state. As a National Scenic Trail, our responsibilities extend beyond trail maintenance. We must Visit WarriorExpeditions.org shine the light on the historical and cultural significance of the communities that the trail passes through and nearby. for more information Footprint Summer/Fall 2020 31