Zora Neale Hurston

On January 7, 1891, Zora Neale Hurston was born in the tiny town of Notasulga, Alabama. She was the fifth of eight children in the Hurston household. Her father John was a carpenter, sharecropper, and a Baptist preacher; and her mother Lucy, a former schoolteacher. Within a year of Zora's birth, the family moved to Eatonville, Florida; a town, which held historical significance as the first, incorporated Black municipality in the United States. In 1904, thirteen-year-old Zora was …

…as she witnessed publishers rejecting one after another of her submitted works. Around 1950 Hurston returned to Florida, where she worked as a cleaning. After leaving this job, she made one last attempt to revive her writing career, and failed. After a slew of unsuccessful career changes (including newspaper journalist, librarian, and substitute teacher), Hurston became a broken, penniless recluse. She suffered a fatal stroke in 1959 and was buried at unmarked grave in Fort Pierce, Florida.