All Trailblazers
Literature
Zora Neale Hurston
Born 1891 · Joined the Ancestors 1960
Fact
First Black graduate of Barnard College
Fact
Their Eyes Were Watching God written in seven weeks
Fact
Alice Walker 1973 search launched a literary revival
Zora Neale Hurston captured the beauty, humor, and complexity of Black Southern life in prose decades ahead of its time. Her masterpiece Their Eyes Were Watching God (1937) is now recognized as one of the great American novels.
Raised in the all-Black town of Eatonville, Florida, she studied anthropology at Columbia and traveled the South collecting folklore. Her use of Black vernacular English was revolutionary.
She died in poverty in 1960 in an unmarked grave — until Alice Walker found the site in 1973 and placed a marker reading: A Genius of the South.
There are years that ask questions and years that answer.— Zora Neale Hurston
Key Milestones
A Life in Firsts
1891
Born in Notasulga, Alabama; raised in Eatonville, Florida
1925
Arrives in NYC, becomes central to Harlem Renaissance
1928
First Black graduate of Barnard College
1937
Their Eyes Were Watching God written in seven weeks
1960
Dies in poverty; buried in unmarked grave
1973
Alice Walker finds and marks her grave, sparking revival
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