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She was eager to enroll at the public high school, but there was just one small problem: Hurston was by that time 26 years old, a few years too old to qualify for free public education. What Hurston did next would become a habit of hers over the years—she said what she needed to say to get what she wanted, even if it didn't exactly fit with the "facts. Hurston enrolled in high school at " Hurston completed high school graduation requirements in a single year, earning her diploma in She then went to work as a manicurist and waitress to earn cash for college.
Zora Neale Hurston: Childhood
The next year, she enrolled at Howard University in Washington, D. Within a year she had obtained her associate's degree. In , two major developments marked a new phase in Hurston's literary and academic careers. The first was that she won second place in two categories in a literary contest sponsored by the journal Opportunity , earning her recognition among the black literary community and its patrons.
At Barnard she met the prominent anthropologist Franz Boas, who became a mentor and a major influence on Hurston's own career. In Boas asked Hurston to go to Harlem to conduct field research on the black community there. Hurston—and Harlem — would never be the same. You've been inactive for a while, logging you out in a few seconds Her essays and short stories appear frequently in literary journals. She begins to study for a doctorate never completed at Columbia University with the help of a Rosenwald Fellowship.
Zora Neale Hurston
Hurston is awarded a Guggenheim fellowship to study obeah, the practice of sorcery in the West Indies. From April to September she conducts research in Jamaica. Her Guggenheim fellowship extended, Hurston continues her research in Haiti. She returns to the United States shortly before the 18 September publication of the novel.
- Zora Neale Hurston: Biography.
- Zora Neale Hurston.
- How It All Went Down.
- Zora Neale Hurston Timeline of Important Dates.
- Awaken Lost.
- Zora Neale Hurston Books!
Hurston writes and publishes Tell My Horse , an account of West Indian obeah practices based on her research. Later in the year she accepts a position as a drama instructor at North Carolina College for Negroes. Her novel Moses, Man of the Mountain is published.
Her memoir Dust Tracks on a Road is published to critical praise. It receives the Anisfield-Wolf Book Award for its take on race relations.
Hurston moves to Honduras to research the black experience in Central America. She writes the novel Seraph on the Swanee , which is published the following year. A financially strapped Hurston takes a job as a maid in Florida.
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She continues to publish well-regarded essays in the Saturday Evening Post and other publications. The Pittsburgh Courier hires Hurston to cover the sensational case of Ruby McCollum, a black woman who shot and killed her white lover, whom she accused of forcing her to have sex. Hurston begins a two-year stint as a columnist for the Fort Pierce Chronicle. During this time she also works as a substitute teacher at a local school. Zora Neale Hurston dies of hypertensive heart disease at the St. Lucie County Welfare Home. Penniless and alone at the time of her death, her neighbors take up a collection to pay for her funeral.
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She is buried in an unmarked grave. Intrigued by Hurston's life story, the writer Alice Walker locates the site of her grave and purchases a headstone for it. The inscription reads "Zora Neale Hurston: A Genius of the South.