Taking place the last week of January each year in Eatonville, Florida, this multi-day, multi-disciplinary event celebrates the life and work of 20th century writer, folklorist and anthropologist, Zora Neale Hurston; her hometown, Eatonville, the nation’s oldest incorporated African American municipality and the cultural contributions people of African ancestry have made to the United States and the world. Attracting thousands of locals and tourists, ZORA! Festival presents an impressive roster of arts, humanities and cultural programming.
The ZORA! Festival features an impressive roster of arts, humanities and cultural programming, including museum exhibitions, public talks, panel discussions, workshops and concerts. It culminates with a three-day weekend Outdoor Festival of the Arts, featuring children’s programming, such as the ZORA! Literacy Initiative and Children’s Corner; Words and Voices which celebrates the written and spoken word, Center Stage featuring local, regional and national acts, an International Marketplace; a Health Village and much more.
The theme for the 2012 Zora Neale Hurston Festival is “The Rise of Community: The Town of Eatonville Models 125 Years of Self-Governance.” Activities include live concerts, educational seminars, heritage tours, a HATitude brunch and an outdoor festival.
Visit the Zora! Festival website for more information.
Zora Neale Hurston Festival of the Arts and Humanities
Address: 227 E. Kennedy Blvd, Eatonville, FL 32751 USA
Phone: (407) 647-3307 or (407) 647-4436
Website: www.zorafestival.com
Map & Driving Directions
ABOUT ZORA NEALE HURSTON
Novelist, folklorist, dramatist, and anthropologist Zora Neale Hurston was born on January 7, 1891, in Eatonville, Florida, the first incorporated black town in the United States. The dialects, customs, and folklore of the people of Eatonville and of rural Florida informed Hurston’s work throughout her career.
Hurston attending a North Carolina College for Negroes football game in 1939.
If you want that good feeling that comes from doing things for other folks then you have to pay for it in abuse and misunderstanding.
Hurston studied at Morgan Academy, the preparatory school of Morgan College, then at Howard University in Washington, D.C. She won a scholarship to Barnard College where she studied anthropology with Franz Boas and earned her bachelor of arts degree while participating in the flourishing Harlem Renaissance. She collected folklore and made recordings in Florida and other areas of the South in the late 1920s. During the Depression, she helped Alan Lomax, the son of pioneer folksong collector John Avery Lomax, document the folk music of Georgia, Florida, and the Bahamas. Later, she worked with the Federal Writer’s Project interviewing Floridians about their lives and culture and recording and collecting the diverse folk songs of her native state—a project she described as “an opportunity to observe the wombs of folk culture still heavy with life.”
Her ethnographic work also took her beyond the United States. She traveled the Caribbean— to Haiti and Jamaica to study folklore and customs—and to Honduras to study black communities. Hurston assembled and published the information she gathered on Haitian and Jamaican voodoo in her book Tell My Horse (1938). Even though her pursuits led her many places, she always returned to Florida. She invoked the spirit and voice of her people by seamlessly weaving the songs, stories, and other information she collected in her studies into her fiction.
Zora Neale Hurston’s wide-ranging interests as well as economic need led her to take an astounding variety of positions. She had short tenures as a manicurist, a librarian, a dramatic coach with the WPA Federal Theatre Project, a story consultant at Paramount Pictures, a maid, and a teacher.
In 1959, after suffering a stroke, Hurston was forced to enter a welfare home where she died in 1960. She was buried in an unmarked grave and her work languished in relative obscurity until 1975, when Alice Walker published the article “In Search of Zora Neale Hurston” in Ms. magazine. In the article, Walker recounts her experiences of searching for, finding, and marking Hurston’s grave.
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God bless Zora Neale Hurston! For many, many years, I have and keep a picture of Zora on the wall in my study. I speak to her picture like we are best friends. I love to look at her picture as I wonder what made her decide to wear the hat she’s psing in. Her hats are my inspiration for new hat ideas!
My favorite book on Zora is “Speak, So You Can Speak Again,” by Lucy Anne Hurston. As a African-American milliner, Zora is my muse, my writing motivator and my inspiration for designing hats. Zora is someone who may be gone from this world but whom I’ll cherish as an inspiration and motivation for me to never give up on my millinery and writing dreams.