Zora Neale Hurston, 1930s Zora Neale Hurston, a prominent writer during the Harlem Renaissance, never felt being African American was a disadvantage. In 1928, when prejudice against blacks was common, she wrote: "I do not belong to the sobbing school of Negrohood who hold that nature somehow has given them a lowdown dirty deal and whose feelings are all hurt about it." Hurston instead saw her racial heritage as a source of deep pride. She grew up in Eatonville, Florida, the first town in the U.S. to be founded by African Americans. When she was a teenager, a white woman she worked for recognized her intelligence and sent her to a school in Baltimore. Later, at Barnard College in New York, she studied anthropology and researched folklore among blacks in the South. In 1937, she wrote her most famous novel, THEIR EYES WERE WATCHING GOD. This story tells of a black woman's search for spiritual growth in an oppressive society. Although Hurston died penniless and mostly forgotten in 1960, interest in her work was revived during the 1980s, particularly by author Alice Walker. Illustration: Courtesy of Brown Brothers, Sterling, PA.
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