Chapter 1
Hurston’s family moved to Eatonville in 1893. Her father, John Hurston,
was the eldest of nine children in an impoverished sharecropper family near
Notasulga; during his lifetime, he would achieve substantial influence in and
around Eatonville as a minister, carpenter, successful family man, and local
politician.His parents, Alfred and AmyHurston, were, like wife Lucy’s parents,
Sarah and Richard Potts, formerly enslaved persons. According to Hurston
and her biographers, the landowning Potts family looked down on the handto-
mouth sharecropping Hurstons who lived across the creek.1 By the time
John spotted 14-year-old Lucy singing in her church choir, the class distinction
between the landowning Potts family and the sharecropping Hurston family
was well known; indeed, Potts family resistance to the marriage offers an interesting
study in African American class dynamics of the time. Neither of Lucy’s
parents wanted her to marry JohnHurston, who was – in addition to being dirt
poor – rumored to be the bastard son of a white man; Hurston’s biographer,
Valerie Boyd, has suggested that John possibly owed his light skin to the fact that
father Alfred was mulatto.
Hurston’s family moved to Eatonville in 1893. Her father, John Hurston,
was the eldest of nine children in an impoverished sharecropper family near
Notasulga; during his lifetime, he would achieve substantial influence in and
around Eatonville as a minister, carpenter, successful family man, and local
politician.His parents, Alfred and AmyHurston, were, like wife Lucy’s parents,
Sarah and Richard Potts, formerly enslaved persons. According to Hurston
and her biographers, the landowning Potts family looked down on the handto-
mouth sharecropping Hurstons who lived across the creek.1 By the time
John spotted 14-year-old Lucy singing in her church choir, the class distinction
between the landowning Potts family and the sharecropping Hurston family
was well known; indeed, Potts family resistance to the marriage offers an interesting
study in African American class dynamics of the time. Neither of Lucy’s
parents wanted her to marry JohnHurston, who was – in addition to being dirt
poor – rumored to be the bastard son of a white man; Hurston’s biographer,
Valerie Boyd, has suggested that John possibly owed his light skin to the fact that
father Alfred was mulatto.
Chapter 2
Zora had two siblings: Sarah who was older, and John who was younger. Her father, John Hurston, preferred Sarah over Zora. He resented that Zora was
born a girl. Her mother, Lucy Hurston, died when Zora was nine years old. Lucy strongly encouraged her to be independent and creative. She encouraged all
of her children to "jump at de sun". After the death of her mother Zora was shuffled around by relatives and rejected by her father when he re-married. For a
place to go, Zora resorted to being a hired domestic in several homes.
Chapter 3
Hurston was the first black scholar to research folklore on the level that she did. She researched songs, dances, tales, and sayings. Much of her book
material revolves around issues of slavery and the time period immediately following it. She took her black rural culture and heritage and celebrated it at a
time when most black scholars were trying hard to deny and forget it. Hurston also studied voodoo practices in Jamaica, Haiti, and the British West Indies.
She took photographs and recorded their songs, dances, and rituals. She had a Guggenheim Fellowship to research in the Caribbean, where she stayed for
two years.
Chapter 4
Hurston returned to Florida in 1948 and faded into obscurity and poverty. In 1959 she had a stroke, from which she never recovered, and in October of the same year was sent
to Lincoln Park Nursing Home, which was run by the St. Lucie County Welfare Agency, where she stayed for some months. She died on January 28, 1960. She was pronounced
dead on arrival at Fort Pierce Memorial Hospital, after being taken there following another stroke. Having no money to cover burial expenses, donations were given to cover
expenses. She was buried at Genesee Memorial Gardens Cemetery (Garden of Heavenly Rest), a segregated cemetery in Fort Pierce, Florida, in an unmarked grave, with many
in attendance. In 1973 the grave was visited by Alice Walker, a well know African- American writer. She found the grave had not been tended and over grown with no
headstone. She purchased a headstone and had it inscribed.
