Zora Neale Hurston Chronology

Books by Zora Neale Hurston

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Zora Neale Hurston, folklorist and writer, became a central figure in the Harlem Renaissance. Hurston was born and educated in Eatonville, Florida, the first incorporated black city in the United States. At the age of 16, she left her home to work with a traveling theatrical company. The company ended up in New York City , where Hurston studied anthropology at Columbia University. She then attended Howard University as well as Barnard College.

In 1931, Hurston collaborated with Langston Hughes to write the play Mule Bone: A Comedy of Negro Life in Three Acts. She wrote her most acclaimed work, Their Eyes Were Watching God in 1937. After writing her autobiography (Dust Tracks on a Road) in 1942, she went on to teach at what is now North Carolina Central University. Her work, revived by feminists in the 1970s, has gained her considerable recognition as one of the most important black writers in American history.

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January 7, 1891 – Born in Eatonsville, Florida, the fifth of eight children, to John Hurston, a carpenter

and Baptist preacher, and Lucy Potts Hurston, a former schoolteacher.

September 1917 – June 1918 – Attends Morgan Academy in Baltimore, completing the high school

requirements.

Summer 1918 – Works as a waitress in a nightclub and a manicurist in a black-owned barbarbershop

that serves only whites.

1918-1919 – Attends Howard prep School, Washington, D.C.

1919-1924 – Attends Howard University; receives an associate degree in 1920.

1921 – Publishes her first story “John Redding Goes to Sea,” in the Stylus, the campus literary

society’s magazine.

December 1924 -- Publishes “Drenched in Light,” a short story, in Opportunity.

1925 – Submits a story, “Spunk,” and a play Color Struck, to Opportunity’s literary contest. Both

win second-place awards; publishes “Spunk” in the June number.

1925-27 – attends Barnard College, studying anthropology with Franz Boas.

1926 – begins field work for Boas in Harlem.

Summer 1926 – Organizes Fire! With Langston Hughes and Wallace Thurman; they publish only one

issue, in November 1926. The issue includes Hurston’s “Sweat.”

August 1926 – Publishes “Muttsy” in Opportunity.

September 1926 – Publishes “Possum or Pig” in the Forum.

September-November 1926 – Publishes “The Eatonsville Anthology” in the Messenger.

1927 – Publishes The First One, a play, in Charles S. Johnson’s Ebony and Topaz.

February 1927 – Goes to Florida to collect folklore.

May 19, 1927 – Marries Herbert Sheen.

September 1927 – First visits Mrs. Rufus Osgood Mason, seeking patronage.

October 1927 – Publishes an account of the black settlement at St. Augustine, Florida, in the Journal

of Negro History; also in this issue “Cudjo’s Own story of the Last African Slaver.”

December 1927 -- Signs a contract with Mason, enabling her to return to the South to collect

folklore.

1928 – satirized as “Sweetie Mae Carr” in Wallace Thurman’s novel about the Harlem Renaissance

Infants of the Spring; receives a bachelor of arts degree from Barnard.

January 1928 – relations with Sheen break off

May 1928 – Publishes “How It feels to Be Colored Me” in the World Tomorrow.

1930-32 -- Organizes the field notes that become Mules and Men.

May-June 1930 – Works on the play Mule Bone with Langston Hughes.

1931 – Publishes “Hoodoo in America” in the Journal of American Folklore.

February 1931 – Breaks with Langston Hughes over the authorship of Mule Bone.

July 7, 1931 – Divorces Sheen.

September 1931 – writes for a theatrical revue called Fast and Furious.

January 1932 – Writes and stages a theatrical revue called The Great Day, first performed on

January 10 on Broadway at the John Golden Theatre; works with the creative

literature department of Rollins College, Winter Park, Florida, to produce a concert

program of Negro music.

1933 -- Writes “The Fiery Chariot.”

January 1933 – Stages From Sun to Sun (a version of Great Day) at Rollins College.

August 1933 – Publishes “The Gilded Six-Bits” in Story.

1934 – Publishes six essays in Nancy Cunard’s anthology, Negro.

January 1934 – Goes to Bethune-Cookman College to establish a school of dramatic arts “based on

pure Negro expression.”

May 1934 – Publishes Jonah’s Gourd Vine, originally titled Big Nigger; it is a Book-of-the-Month

Club selection.

September 1934 – Publishes “The Fire and the Cloud” in the Challenge.

November 1934 – Singing Steel (a version of Great Day) performed in Chicago.

January 1935 – Makes an abortive attempt to study for a Ph.D. in anthropology at Columbia

University on a fellowship from the Rosenwald Foundation. In fact, she seldom attends

classes.

August 1935 – Joins the WPA Federal Theatre project as a “dramatic coach.”

October 1935 – Mules and men published.

March 1936 – Awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship to study West Indian Obeah practices.

April –September 1936 – In Jamaica.

September-March 1937 – In Haiti; writes Their Eyes Were Watching God in seven weeks.

May 1937 – Returns to Haiti on a renewed Guggenheim.

September 1937 – Returns to the United States; Their Eyes Were Watching God published,

September 18.

February-March 1938 – Writes Tell My Horse: Voodoo and Life in Haiti and Jamaica; it is published the same year.

April 1938 – Joins the Federal Writer project in Florida to on The Florida Negro.

1939 – Publishes “Now Take Noses” in Cordially Yours.

June 1939 – receives an honorary Doctor of Letters degree from Morgan State College.

June 27, 1939 – marines Albert Price III in Florida.

Summer 1939 – Hired as a drama instructor by North Carolina College for Negroes at Durham;

meets Paul Green, professor of drama, at the University of North Carolina.

November 1939 – Moses, Man of the Mountain published.

February 1940 – Files for divorce from Price, though the two are reconciled briefly.

Summer 1940 – Makes a folklore-collecting trip to South Carolina.

Spring-July 1941 – Writes Dust Tracks on a Road.

July 1941 – Publishes “Cock Robin, Beale street” in the Southern Literary Messenger.

October 1941-January 1942 – Publishes “Story in Harlem Slang” in the American Mercury.

September 5, 1942 – Publishes a profile of Lawrence Silas in the Saturday Evening Post.

November 1942 -- Dust Tracks on a Road published.

February 1943 – Awarded the Anisfield-Wolf Book award in Race Relations for Dust Tracks; on the

cover of the Saturday Review.

March 1943 – Receives Howard University’s Distinguished Alumni Award.

May 1943 – Publishes "The 'Pet Negro' Syndrome” in the American Mercury.

June 1944 – Publishes “My Most Humiliating Jim Crow Experience” in the Negro Digest.

1945 – Writes "Mrs. Doctor" ; it is rejected by Lippincott.

March 1945 – Publishes “The Rise of the Begging Joints” in the American Mercury.

December 1945 – publishes “Crazy for This Democracy” in the Negro Digest.

1947 – Publishes a review of Robert Tallant’s Voodoo in New Orleans in the Journal of American

Folklore.

May 1947 – Goes to British Honduras to research black communities in Central America; writes

Seraph on Suwanee; stays in Honduras until March 1948.

September 1948 – falsely accused of molesting a ten-year-old boy and arrested; case finally

dismissed in March 1949.

October 1948 – Seraph on Suwanee published.

March 1950 – Publishes “Conscience of the Court” in the Saturday Evening Post, while working as

a maid in Rivo Island, Florida.

April 1950 -- Publishes “What White Publishers Won’t Print” in the Saturday Evening Post.

November 1950 – Publishes “I Saw Negro Votes Peddled” in the American Legion Magazine.

Winter 1950-51 – Moves to Belle Glade, Florida.

June 1951 – Publishes “Why the Negro Won’t Buy Communism” in the American Legion Magazine.

December 8, 1951 – publishes “A Negro Votes Sizes Up Taft” in the Saturday Evening Post.

1952 – Hired by the Pittsburgh Courier to cover the Ruby McCollum case.

May 1956 – Receives an award for “education and human relations” at Bethune-Cookman College.

June 1956 – Works as a librarian at Patrick Air Force Base in Florida; fired in 1957.

1957-59 – Writes a column on “Hoodoo and Black Magic” for the Fort Pierce Chronicle.

1958 – Works as a substitute teacher at Lincoln Park Academy, Force pierce.

Early 1959 – Suffers a stroke.

October 1959 – Forced to enter the St. Lucie County Welfare Home.

January 28, 1960 – Dies in the St. Lucie County Welfare Home of “hypertension heart disease”; buried in an unmarked grave in the Garden of Heavenly Rest, Fort Pierce.

August 1973 – Alice Walker discovers and marks Hurston’s grave.

March 1975 -- Walker publishes “In Search of Zora Neale Hurston,” in Ms., launching a Hurston revival

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updated 1 October 2007