Zora Neale Hurtson Documentary

zora neale hurston was a pioneering black woman she was with pollen artist at a time when black women were expected to call for a preservationist she wants to make certain that people coming afterwards generation after generation know the sequence and the rich kirstin as air family inherited the javelin zora neale hurston was the most significant most published black woman writer first however one wishes to define her laura's trail blazing anthropologists evocative novelist essayist and so i'm neal hurston was a literary pioneer through an

compromise determination has emerged today as one of the most significant letters and interpreters southern african americans from public radio international and vanessa williams and for the next hour we explore the extraordinary life and times and saw a meal it's b it was during one of the major events in his native land post reconstruction era set off a wave of western and northern migration that stretch over four decades hundreds of thousands of southern blacks having long suffered under discriminatory repressive sometimes deadly devices including lack of jim crow laws sharecropping and

lynchings made their way to the west the midwest and northern cities and search of better paying jobs and greater economic opportunity parliament became a magnet for many migrating blacks as large sections of the city that had been segregated prior to nineteen twenty when now available to families artists singers writers and intellectuals this exodus urged on by the hopes of political and economic advancement coincided with a burgeoning literary cultural and artistic uprising it's really captures an alliance spearheaded by an la called it the new negro movement person biographer robert hemenway describes how these concurring events transformed holliman to what he called a mecca for black artists it helps the boar moving in the harlem because it was an area that had previously been segregated against black people owning houses and apartments there and in the decade of nineteen ten to nineteen twenty the harlem renaissance is usually refer

to the period nineteen twenties some people you extended beyond that are startled that earlier but it's basically the period of the twenties no when an awful lot of african american writers and artists and singers and intellectual scheme to new york politically of the new negro movement was built around the idea that black people were not going to be any longer abide by discriminatory treatment on the secondhand citizenship forbid offered by american society and so the new negro as somebody who is not going to quietly standby like the old negro had and what black people be discriminated against that was the political context for the new negro movement in the harlem renaissance really are kind of synonymous terms of the cultural us that a context for it was that you had people like zora neale hurston and langston hughes mr ramon thompson wallace thurman and various other writers artists of the period who came to new york lived in harlem knew each other went to each others parties got involved with the civil rights organization the urban league amendable a cpa all that sort of came together in the harlem

renaissance and it's a very convenient label for a period of sort of intense artistic activity which store nearer to it right at the center germs than arrived in harlem in january of nineteen twenty five after what she would later call her time of wandering eu spent moving between family members traveling with the theater group attempting in spurts to further her education two years prior to coming to new york she had been an english student howard university it was there that she met professor alan locke who has more than eager to discover and promote emerging black artistic talent person had written a number of short stories i was encouraged and to some of the many literary contests designed to seek out the type of artistic talent renaissance asians would used to fuel the movement charles johnson was

editor of opportunity a magazine published by the national urban league he was so impressed with kristen submissions that he wrote to her while she was still at howard university suggesting she considered moving to new york where the harlem renaissance is in full bloom harrison had struggled with little or no money for almost ten years just waiting for the opportunity to make her imprint on the world kirsten biographer and valerie boy suggested this small amount of encouragement was all hers to needed her literary talent unbowed geishas personality we do the rest she packed up her few belongings left how university and just with a dollar fifty cents in her purse moved to new york city and very quickly elbow her way into the harlem renaissance meeting people like langston hughes and county column and some of the other writers of that era that was up to the worst enemy of nineteen twenty five no sewers or is coming out party

in your soul at this party is at the party after the opportunity awards dinner where zorro one more wards in england she won the four words and people who didn't know about her suddenly we're hearing about this writer zora neale hurston who kept getting up to get her ward's says she certainly raised a few eyebrows here so people became aware of her and she entered this after parting with a colorful scarf wrapped around her neck and she flung the scarf around their neck and their show we weigh their flamboyant way and going to the party saying come on airstrikes announcing the name of her award winning play and that was her entrance into harlem literary community in fact langston hughes wrote to call them that in the novelist and photographer a few weeks later he had been at that party and he wrote to grow up in that insane so no person has a colorful girl i think i like to know her better that was sort of how people responded to that very bold act of self introduction at

that after party it says are person had made her way north on the anonymity of eden til florida the oldest black incorporated municipality in america and in the consciousness of sun the most prominent benefactors and major players of the harlem renaissance at this awards dinner she would meet any maiden name who approved instrumental in getting person accepted into the leaks all white on a college julian and a friend and jenny herz isn't a popular figure and well received writer who would contribute to her says excessive honored harrison seemed to knowingly take full advantage of every relationship an opportunity afforded to her that night which proves to be a pivotal moment in her life after a long and difficult journey when it began with the sudden death of her mother when her son was thirteen years old

valerie boyd so as mother was really the glue that held the family together and zora was especially close to her mother her mother always encouraged bizarre and her other kids to jump at the son she said she might not reach the stars but a leash you get off the ground so her mother was a real encourage or for her and also stood between soar and her father who didn't get along so much misery he was sort of disappointed as or being his second daughter he has six sons and two daughters he was delighted to have the first daughter but the second daughter he felt was just a as he put it another girl child to wearing shoes and bring him nothing there was tension between zoran her father from the beginning after her mother died that tension escalate it and zora was really sort of dust until adulthood her father sent her way to school and then he didn't pay the tuitions for the school and basically from about the time of about fourteen or fifteen so was really

forced to serve make her own way into adulthood that moment really shifted her life she struggled financially and was really poor and did whatever she could just to survive for several years that was really the abrupt ending up her childhood when she left for nearly a decade personally shuffle between family members worked as a domestic and held other menial jobs while the details of her life during this period are still largely unaccounted for it is clear she never gave up her quest for an education after her mother's death after she was sort of disappeared from the public record valerie boyd from about the age of fifteen or sixteen all the way up to age twenty six there are very few records of zorro during that two year period she sort of went under the radar and you have to understand that it was fairly easy for a black woman to go under the radar during that time that she was natasha man in some way as wife or daughter she didn't re emerge on the public record

until she was twenty six years old and living in baltimore was nineteen seventeen our older sister lived in baltimore and bad why soros twenty six years all but still hadn't finished high school so in order to qualify for free public schooling state of maryland she lupton years off of her life until school officials she was sixteen rather than twenty six and in that way she was able to reinvent herself but it was that act of reinvention just have really like those years of her life that really of propelled her into going to the person that she would ultimately become of course was she like those ten years off she never had them back on samsung in person had remarkable ability to refashion itself throughout her

life often taking the road less traveled issues both a scholar and an artist at a time and black women were expected to be neither it were cheryl law professor of english at rutgers who discovered her son's actual birthplace and they always searching the nineteen hundred census she uncovered many revealing details a person's life facts that would shed light on her incredible artistic endeavors was a myth maker that's another story she chose that was recorded in may the defense is aiming to hold

onto it many union members and we find out to get so many of the names of hurston gives her characters in her stories and novels are in fact and the names of her neighbors and then i think it's important because one of the ways of hurston is able to avoid the stereotypes largely derives from menstrual sea that had so much characterized african american characterization infection she wrote herself out of that by basing her stories on les lives and experiences of her neighbors so the census records are our rich for several reasons before zora neale hurston graduated from barnard in nineteen twenty eight with a bachelor's degree in english she sat alongside famed anthropologist francisco eyes and through the supportive personal finance series such as charlotte osgood mason and several guggenheim fellowships she traveled back to her beloved rural south collecting and

documenting black folklore stories and folk music hanging out at giants turpentine camps and saw and lumber mills traveling with a car she calls stassi singing and a shiny new pearl handled pistol seth babcock out a deal and the land of them began to get rid of a lot of the time to meet that challenge young and relevant than merely land now gabby and i am now i'm a man thank you all right

as someone who is just to to the blues women of the nineteen twenties cheryl wall of course there were black women writers poets and novelists of the time but they you wrote out of mainly middle class experience is an illusion us heading to person who was very much air to the same legacy that bessie smith and my rainy inherited and she was a traveling woman she was also very much interested in exploring the vernacular speech and the music of african americans and so when she talks about the june as the most important place in america's the juke was also the place where it blues singers practiced and resigned there are susan afraid to go where she wanted to go she's close enough to come north in stages as did many of the hundreds of thousands of black people who participated in

the great migration she was also ball enough to go back south at a time when few we're following that particular path which he recognized there was something of value the answers at this enough to claim it at a time when conventional wisdom had it that black people particularly rural southern black people did not speak proper english christian ideology well in fact they had made or help to shape the language that white people in the south spoke that rather than being deficient verbally they were exemplars of verbal expression and ingenuity and agility person's interest in chronicling and celebrating the lives of ordinary self educated black folks in the south became the primary theme of her literary works after graduating with a degree in english in nineteen twenty eight christmas finally ready to launch a literary career her first book jonas or vine was

published in nineteen thirty four in our next segment we explore how hurst his early success as a writer challenge the political and colorful designs of the harlem renaissance and how those who encourage her unique literary talent we come to resist the image of the black world southerner i'm vanessa williams and you're listening to the life and times of zora neale hurston from public radio international you're listening to the life and times of zora neale hurston and kansas public radio next week on k pr presents to friends turkey elf i felt in a landon lecture given january twenty six two thousand seven a kansas state university oh five olive outgoing saudi ambassador to the united states join us for kbr presents every sunday evening at eight o'clock on kansas public radio or on sunday afternoons at three o'clock on k pr too it's been

nice dave neal in a qr and try and get through that when will we do think the world without humanity yet you have people and that thing you said about the new talent if you glad both night and the moon was up to get this was taken within an eminem happen more this shadow you glad you run any value and of course that a lot of men especially up at the desk either win me and nine thousand shuttle atlantis out of the people would go that route the south on their special and i'm so it was

raising money many retail way iran without me this lack of bell and i thought oh there's a million about other people make the same claim on the moon had any and i've actually been quite believe that you didn't get to go with him to a meteor when i'm gone another direction and you're genuinely a claim and making claims on the moon and everything in a lab outside of also the tone everything to go my way that was an interview segment from the early forties with mary margaret mcbride and at epa f radio it came as a child growing up in eden til florida bizarre neale hurston had every reason to feel special the all black historic town that afforded her lifestyle and culture unlike any of those experienced by the other personalities associated with the harlem renaissance eden bill as herson says in her autobiography

was not the black backside of a white town for her the town go by that in a typical deal of the racially charged in segregated south valley boyd was amazing about evil especially for zora neale hurston growing up there at the early part of the twentieth century was that it was a place where she was really shelter from racism and never indoctrinated inferiority so it was a wonderful place for her to grow up because she saw examples of black achievement all around her in the mayor was black the town council members are black the store owners were black so she saw these examples of achievement and all these examples of what she could do or be so she grew up in eden no viewing her limitless potential and feeling as she could do or be whatever she wants to do and be that was rare for a black child born the end

right moon by writing and publishing highly un sanitized depictions of earls southern blacks in a box and folklore collections kirsten glamorize the southern identity using artistic elements and symbols political figures like alan lokken others sought to abandon she was a product of the south a woman is interested in that hearing to the political agenda at the time and writer anthropologist dedicated to preserving and presenting the folk lives of the people who inspired her the men and women she grew up listening to a person a tame critical success receiving rave reviews from the white interviewers she receives stinging criticism from those within the black academic and

literary community and she became a symbol of the kind of cultural stagnation harlem renaissance elders resented hurston scholar carla kaplan serve said it was her son's association with this counter culture they both attributed to the rapid decline in her status among her contemporaries and set off a campaign by political strong arms to relegate hurt are the parameters of the movement this was a risky move hysterically and it was a risky move politically because it ran afoul of the main aesthetic and political talents of the harlem renaissance most of her contemporaries which is to say also most of her dear friends in the harlem renaissance we're absolutely dedicated to the notion that the literary arts where the signal most important way that blacks could achieve civil rights and that they would do so by showing white america the blacks were really no different which meant that the theater and the fiction that was considered most important in the harlem renaissance with those cultural representations that showed

blacks looking like mainstream ideas of white culture which is to say northern urban middle class professional blacks kirsten wanted to do something altogether different she wanted to show white and indeed black culture a group of black americans they have probably never heard of says she wanted to go down into the deep south into the sub working class and document the lives of what she called the negro farthest down yes yes it's been on april eighteenth nineteen thirty four person wrote to learn the ropes by the political activists paul

robeson in response to criticism directed at her were saying i tried to be natural and not pander to the folks that spectrum now and a villain in every negro nodded and i want a pander those recently see nothing but perfection in all of this there's this descending rank among the so called race what's undeniably due to her radical independence and her continued embrace of cultural artifacts they start a band she seemed impervious to the political climate that swirled around her refusing to respond at least artistically to the barrage of harsh criticism directed at her great novels continued a year later came the first compilation of african american folk tales collected and published by an african american mules and then followed two years later by tell my horse a groundbreaking study of voodoo called from hearst is research in haiti criticism among her contemporaries was unrelenting and followed each of her seven

books in nineteen thirty seven hurston released her most well known ends celebrated novel their eyes were watching god which chronicles says semi autobiographical and self actualize inca tag honest named janie a woman who like kristen embarks on a journey in search of self fulfillment despite the pressures from opposing forces to conform it was a spring afternoon in west florida jamie had spent most of the day and a blossoming pear tree in the backyard she had been spending every minute that she could steal from a joyous under that tree for the last three days that was to say ever since the first tiny balloon and opened it had called her to calm and peace on a mystery from barren brown stands to glistening leave because the lily buds to simulate

virginity and boom it's tremendously how why it was like a fruit soon forgotten in another existence and remember again what how why his singing she hears that had nothing to do with it is the rows of the world was that breathing out some mail it followed her through all our waking moments and caressed her in her sleep it connected itself with other really felt matters that had struck her outside observation and bury themselves in a flash now they emerged and questioned about her consciousness lucille thompkins writing the new york times book review described the writing simply as beautiful however hurston was black contemporaries once

again provided the harshest criticism richard wright who achieve moderate literary success as a protest writer and had grown up the grandson of slaves in mississippi could not come to terms with her since racial imbalance and pastel portrayals of rustic blacks he wrote his review of the novel in new masses ms host and seemed to have no desire whatsoever to move in the direction of serious fiction she can ride but her prose is cloaked in that facile sensuality that has dogged me or expression says the days of phillis wheatley ms hurston voluntarily continues in her novel the tradition which was forced upon the negro in the theater that is the minstrel technique that makes the white folks' laugh her character's eat and laugh and cry and work and go they swing like a pendulum eternally and that's a theme ever awarded in which america likes to see the negro live between laughter and tears the sensory

sweep of her novel carries no theme no message no thought in the main her novel is not addressed to the negro the tall white audience who saw the misty taste she knows how to satisfy see explores the phase of negro life which is quite the phase which evokes a pity a smile on the lips of the superior race there was also an attack from al mock person's former teacher an early supporter the same editor who published her first short story spunk his words had to cut hurston particularly deep reading an opportunity he posed to her when will the negro novelist of majority come to grips with motor fiction and social document fiction progressive southern fiction has already banned as the legend of these entertaining sloper moves on the reading public's still loves the lab with weep over and envy having gotten rid

of condescension but has mounted over an oversimplification says why would someone like kristen obviously a respected an established artists with extraordinary literary talent gamble with her literary career in such a cavalier fashion why did he continue to thumb her nose at the most respected and powerful leaders in the african american community and perhaps most importantly why would she deliberately challenge the collective voice cultural identity and political unity of the harlem renaissance historians have long speculated that the black elite and many of her since contemporaries may not fully considered her unique upbringing

her counterculture positioning was probably established long before she first came to new york city by growing up in an all black and historic town of eden til florida a place for her father served as mayor and all the town officials and community palace or black person was spared the typical view of a racially charged in segregated south hurston was not as most historians believe indoctrinated and racial it's very arty to the degree that most of her contemporaries might've been you're a black woman or a black person a very gendered in the united states of america in the first fifty or so years of the twentieth century you don't encounter segregation you're going come or racism it an encounter which you could call the race problem robert hemenway but kirsten his point was that there's so much more to life as a black person than just a race problem and that's the way whites tended to find black people tend to find that people in terms of was their position on a race problem how interacting with the white world hurston was less interested now summit was

interacting with the white world as she was and how people were just plain living their lives kirsten was writing about the black community from within she was writing protest as some black writers the time were doing the conflicts as she ran into about her own work tended to be conflicts or why wasn't she writing a protest novel like richard wright's a native son or i wish she is talking about people having a good time when you were living in a country where full citizenship rights for black people are being denied where black people itself could lose their lives if they impacted on a white community in the wrong way says these diseases it's b hemenway also notes that person was the only major writer who had

come directly from the south and had brought an extra dimension to the renaissance her ability to remain authentic to what she considered representative of her native culture blaydon public and so since and despite the growing wave of conformity is indeed profound criticism couldn't manage to tame her first and ten he knew collecting folklore and writing and publishing books and staging and producing broadway plays based on her folklore she collaborated with langston hughes to write and produce the play real bone however creative differences in ownership issues with later cripple their close friendship and prevent the play from being performed during their lifetime kristen also joined other renaissance mavericks to produce a rebellious at vanguard magazine they called fire the magazine features stories and poetry the more progressive literary outlets had rejected it only lasted one issue facing controversy an opposition that almost every

turn person remain prolific and dedicated to her where carla kaplan kirsten had put herself at the center of much of what was going on in american culture and an african american culture specifically she went through each of the activities that she dedicated her time too by breaking the rolls and doing things slightly askew of the way everybody else was doing them among them was constant criticism of the black leadership of the harlem renaissance the black leadership of the nineteen thirties and indeed she was constantly critical of the very people who could help her career and who were her good friends she wrote one letter for example to james weldon johnson in which she described elaine lee warlock known as the mid wife of the harlem renaissance as a spiteful little snug she also during the same period created a rather unfortunate nickname for web dubois and she called him in print and in

public dr dubious some of these criticisms of the black leadership and of her friends would come back to haunt her particularly in the nineteen forties it says christie's literary representations of earl southern culture however authentic artistic lyrical and beautifully represented had a profound effect on her personal and professional life she left new york in nineteen fifty after false charges of child molestation against her were dropped she contemplated suicide and quickly moved back to florida when she wrote a number of controversial essay and found it hard to keep a job even as a domestic her books was soon out of print all subsequent

manuscripts were rejected and she suffered for many years and financial invisible destitution and celebrated death in nineteen sixty seemed to signify her place and permanent obscurity she was laid to rest in an unmarked grave and fort pierce florida however this is not the end of zora neale hurston zinc credible story in our final segment we recount her last years in florida her own celebrated death and ultimately the birth of bizarre mania as spectacular resurrection of the work and cultural icon a city led by fellow southern writer and author of the color purple alice walker i'm vanessa williams and you're listening to the life and times of zora neale hurston from public radio international you're listening to the mighty times neal hurston

and kansas public radio next week on keep your presents friends turkey oh five fell in a landon lecture given january twenty six two thousand and seven a kansas state university is a five a live outgoing friday ambassador to the united states join us for kbr prisons every sunday evening at eight o'clock or on sunday afternoons on k pr too yes

yes as the great depression to repel the united states in the nineteen thirties the desolation cement in the end the size as an interest in creation of and support for such artists most of the writers and artists associated with the movement including justin faust and nella larsen went back to the glass their creative output or almost everyone except langston hughes and zora neale hurston it up on art as a profession person's commitment to continue writing was a great sacrifice both financially and politically yes she moved headstrong into one project after another and always with the same goal carla kaplan in the nineteen forties she continued to come up with really interesting schemes to document and represent the beauty and the significance of black culture and black history in fact at one point in the nineteen

forties she tried to raise a sunken slave ship called the clerk he'll unfortunately it was capped off in nineteen forty eight by a true personal tragedy in nineteen forty eight zora neale hurston was traveling in honduras she was on an expedition to discover what she thought would be a lost mayan village while she was gone our former landlady of hers who she had clearly angered decided to take revenge on hurston by accusing her of having sexually molested her ten year old son the story got out into the black press it was an enormous headline christian was humiliated nationally by being accused of a sex crime she was arrested for this crime she was thrown in jail overnight she was absolutely devastated both by the betrayal in the black press and by the humiliation of being accused of something so unthinkable as molesting a child she became suicidal she wrote a suicide note to her dear friends carl van backed in and fannie a maronite her lawyer

got her out of jail and she was able to document clearly that she could have committed this crime because she was in honduras says her passport clearly showed but she was devastated by having been humiliated in the national press and she disappeared for purity of many months she completely vanished from the public record i was able to discover that she went back into florida a place that have always sustained and nurtured her gone were the days of black cloak and the flood of black artistic expression of publishing that signified the height of the harlem renaissance other person by this time a published seven books she found the same industry no longer willing to embrace her work there's evidence of at least two novels that were rejected the lives of barney church a story that african americans in hollywood and the golden bench of god which was to be her son's life story of madame c j walker the first african american entrepreneur to earn a million dollars both manuscripts have been lost periodically

hearst was able to publish your essays in various black newspapers of these efforts were routinely met with astounding criticism one of the most controversial of these express her position on integration cheryl wall arsenic found herself i think out of sync with the leaders of african americans at the time she had expressed real impatience with the move towards integration because she'd leave for example the brown v board of education decision in nineteen fifty four or rather than a victory was essentially the way that most african american leaders and i would say most african americans abu eighty two p harrison saw it as important and so because that seemed to move from the premise that might keep we needed to be in schools in institutions with white people in order to succeed next

train says of her since i've heard suggested otherwise you'd go head than i am very good place to grow up in a given her a sense of self that she would not have perhaps developed had she been in an integrated community so hearst was really isolated ideologically she's isolated artistically and she was flat broke yet angelou because the discrimination in the publishing industry during the time harrison never made a lot of money from her writing the largest loyalty she ever receive from any of her books was nine hundred and

seventy three dollars and the largest advanced she ever received from a publisher was five hundred dollars when white writers at the time were routinely receding five thousand dollar advances soon her daunting economic situation and political past occasions would be compounded by her failing health in the nineteen fifties because she was unable to publish because she was no longer a radio personality as she had been in the nineteen thirties and forties she's finding it extremely difficult just to get enough money to live and she took a series of very difficult jobs which are also hard on her health unfortunately one of those jobs was as a maid in revolt island florida and she took the job as a maid when she published one of the last published stories of her life of her writing career in the saturday evening post unfortunately a reporter found out that she was working as a maid at the time that story came out and it actually became a national story sort neale hurston working as a maid quote just to live a little so she found

herself once again humiliated in the national press and that seemed to increase her difficulties hurston was extremely independent although it is known that she had been married three times none of her marriage it's lasted longer than one year in january of nineteen sixty and far from the dazzling limelight have a literary success hurston died alone lane and celebrated and penniless death and fort pierce florida there was no money even for a great sound kirsten did indeed happen to die without money college happen when she died everything that she owned she did not have money in you lived in south florida in the late nineteen fifties or the nineteen sixties typically what would happen to your personal effects is that they would all be gathered up and taken out back behind her house and burnt that was the most typical way to destroy the personal effects of poor people and poor people of color at the time everything that she had owned was

gathered up from her little two room house piled up and it was set on fire at the time fortunately a young local black deputy sheriff in his twenties a man impact of all happen to be driving by and he saw the little plume of smoke and he said to himself somebody must have died and he started to get a little closer mostly out of curiosity and it got a little closer he began to think that could be mis her stint house because everyone in the neighborhood had known for months that she was suffering she had had a series of strokes she had been paralyzed on one side for weeks the community had been looking after her every day bringing her food checking up on her and he knew that she had been quite ill so he started driving faster and faster and as he got closer and closer he realized oh my goodness that is ms hearst and house he's driving one of those huge cruisers that you would've driven at the time with a big tail fins and he says he says i am that car into the curb left the engine running and went running into the back

of the house where the yard man on instructions was tending a bonfire and pat of all yelling get a hose get a hose pantyhose started putting out the bonfire with his bare hands because he knew what a gift zora neale hurston had how precious everything she had written was what a terrible national tragedy it was of her personal effects which would include most of her carbon copies of letters and her manuscripts in particular were burned and destroyed and he successfully put out most of that fire both with his handsome with a hose and then he gathered all those sopping wet half burned papers and he piled them in his trunk and you pile them on the backseat of his car and he took them back to his house where he sent them on his screened porch still steaming and dripping wet and his wife said what do you think you're doing and he said these are most persons things they include among other things her stern's last known novel called herod the great a lander

a lamb her son's death could have been the event that cemented to play prominent obscurity artistic endeavors an even stiffer ever lay in the shadow of her counter revolutionary status but a movement that began when alice walker's little essay in search of her mother's garden which appeared in ms magazine in nineteen seventy four has led to a literary resurrection of zora neale hurston robert hemenway what the first biography on zora neale hurston and just our legacy some fifteen years after her death sit on a new direction i wrote an essay on how zora neale hurston was buried in an unmarked grave in st lucie county florida fort pierce florida and alice saw that essay and the book and said this just isn't right to zora neale hurston and i

admire so much as a writer and as a woman and she should be an unmarked grave so alice walker went to fort pierce florida and sort of went out to the garden of the heavenly rest which was a segregated cemetery in fort pierce florida and hours determine where she thought that zora neale hurston was married and when and paid for a headstone to be put on that brave that graveside read zora neale hurston genius of the self folklorist novelist and colleges like you know one nineteen sixty in houses always blamed me for not getting the dates right cause i made her the day she put on the gravestone wrong because you as i say we now know she was born a canary were but we do know that when i was writing that essay involves whispering the gravestone there no longer subject to the biases imposed by the political identity of the nineteen twenties and thirties contemporary observers and scholars continue to analyze her son's personal and cultural identity through new evaluative criterion opening herson another african american

literary figures up to greater galleries asian and ultimately expanding the canon of american literature after a lifetime of public and professional scrutiny or work emerges as some of the most profound an accurate documentation of rural southern folklore existing today despite unrelenting criticism from the most powerful and respected black elite person embraced the seven agrarian anesthetic targeted for elimination by the cultural sphere of the harlem renaissance and a folklore collections at not the fees effective use of authentic dialogue and african american cultural traditions of all letter a posthumous canonical status today person is one of the most influential widely read and celebrated personalities of the harlem renaissance her work is the subject of ongoing scholarly review her life and her legacy inspiring new plays

lectures biographies radio and television documentaries movies festivals and even postal stamps and mine thierry historian and director of the annual zora neale hurston festival and eat until florida provides perhaps the perfect explanation for her son's rise from obscurity the sad reality of being born before your time is that you have to die and others have to come afterwards to appreciate what you're doing how you're dedicate your your life you must remember that when we began this work in nineteen eighty seven that in orange county florida is soaring neale hurston was not a known quantity i mean people would say was so what would soar what is as aura what who is zahra neal hurston if it were not for that careful and meticulous work of

zora neale hurston and documenting the life and for quasar rural african descended americans we would not have those authentic traditions so apart from zora neale hurston innocence and she certainly was a pioneer and her work constitutes the body of folkways of that rural southerners she has made the world on the world black southerner known to the tens of thousands hundreds of thousands of people who read her maturity and so i would say that she plays a seminal role in our understanding of the first say forty years on of the twentieth century from a rural southern black prospective she's a cultural preservation she wants to make certain that the people coming afterwards generation after

generation know they're antecedents and the rich the rich culture of their antecedents and of them who they are what is their assets harrison didn't feel the pressure she just ignored the pressure for women to marry share a wall she ignored the pressure for women to my the children she was very much intent aunt following her own way to become an artist at a time when that wasn't something that women did to become an educated woman which was there of course in itself and then to use that education to document the expressions of an educated black american so she just made her own path decided what she believed in and adhered to those beliefs i think the way that a hurston use the language is of course the most important legacy that

she least two other writers and one can see allusions to her students to work in i'm writing by gloria naylor in societies sunday toni morrison paul marshall ishmael reed juror to woolf and of course alice walker and i'm only scratching the surface of the list urban land there are the literary world has finally come to realize the historical social and cultural significance of zora neale hurston

according to alice walker hurston was a trailblazer a black woman who followed her own road elite in a plane and if you separate yourself from common people folklore is the arts of that people hurston wrote before they find out that there is any such thing as art today she is recognize as an acclaimed literary artists anthropologists and preservationist who stood in defiance and offensive though she loved and respected most though she called farthest down hurston would go down for work camps have turpentine still or camp or something like that ate out whether building railroads across the south in the nineteen twenties she would take a guitar with her and out of the juke joint and a job on saturday night and then say you know i'd lose it you know the songs and they should say here's what i know and

then before long she would be train blues lyrics and melodies with whoever man was illinois was sitting there playing guitar of the jets join the job and there's just a little blues called how much that she collected it to me i can just sort of imagined zora neale hurston singing this intriguing songs with somebody like him especially said we don't like what the blues like this i keep repeating it pretty until people are in the group tell me that i've got it right and that i carry it with me wherever i go well you may fear the most bailey

i'm so this program is narrated by vanessa williams featured dramatic meeting by reading the life and times of zora neale hurston was written and produced by erin meyers music by brent baughman engineering and production but your voice overs by kim davis and chris watson special thanks to valerie boy charles atkins because publishers and this data so interesting to get support for this program comes from the station and publicly international stations nationwide an educational to me on the floor the bureau of historic preservation sort of a part of the state and by the pri program on the centers include the ford foundation and

the john d and catherine t macarthur foundation international