Zora Neale Hurston
(1891-1960)

Died aged c. 69

Zora Neale Hurston was one of the most influential American writers of the 20th century. Born in 1891 in Notasulga, Alabama, Hurston was a folklorist and anthropologist. Her family moved to Eatonville in 1893. She was a recipient of Rosenwald and Guggenheim fellowships and was one of the first blacks to graduate from Barnard College in New York City. Her autobiographical work, Dust Tracks on the Road, won the Anisfield-Wolf award from the Saturday Review in 1943. She spent the last years of her life in obscurity in Fort Pierce. Here, she worked on her last book, The Life of Herod the Great, and also taught at Lincoln Park Academy, now the Lincoln Park Academy Magnet School. She died in 1960 in Fort Pierce. Today her novels, stories and autobiography are on reading lists of schools across the nation.

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