Zora Neale Hurston National Museum of Fine Arts | Eatonville, FL

“She had been getting ready for her great journey to the horizons in search of people; it was important to all the world that she should find them and they find her.”

Zora Neale Hurston,
Their Eyes Were Watching God, chapter 9.

Named in honor of one of the pre-eminent writers of twentieth-century African-American literature, the Zora Neale Hurston National Museum of Fine Arts features not only the works of Zora Neal Hurston, a writer, anthropologist and folklorist known for such works as Their Eyes Were Watching God. The museum also showcases the work of other artists of African descent, as well as other historical artifacts (e.g. old photos) of her hometown of Eatonville, Florida. About 20 minutes north of downtown Orlando, the historic town was one of approximately one hundred of communities founded by and for African Americans were established throughout the southern U.S. from the 1880s to the 1930s. In fact, Eatonville was the first incorporated African American town in the U.S. Admission is free, but donations are appreciated.

See Also the Zora Neale Hurston Festival of Fine Arts & Humanities.

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Zora Neale Hurston National Museum of Fine Arts
Address: 227 East Kennedy Boulevard, Eatonville, Florida 32751
Phone: 407-647-3307
Official Website: www.zoranealehurstonmuseum.com
Map & Driving Directions

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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 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.

Additional Information:

• Zora Neale Horton Official Website
• Town of Eatonville, Official Website
• Zora Neale Hurston Festival of the Arts and Humanities