Zora Neale Hurston was a leading figure in the Harlem Renaissance cultural movement (See: Background), as well as a poet, playwright, and anthropologist. She is best known for her work on African-American folklore and culture, and for her 1937 novel Their Eyes Were Watching God, which is widely celebrated as one of the greatest examples of 20th-century African-American literature.

Born in Alabama in 1891 (although she would later claim a birth date of 1901), Hurston grew up in Eatonville, Florida’s first all-Black town. She left home when she was 16 and was married and divorced three times over the course of her life. Living in New York during the latter part of the Harlem Renaissance, she associated and collaborated with many major African-American writers and intellectuals of the era, including Langston Hughes (1902-1967) and Wallace Thurman (1902-1934). Hurston helped to found numerous magazines and journals, and published dozens of short stories, plays, and essays in addition to her major novels and ethnographic studies.

Hurston studied anthropology at Barnard College and Columbia University under the famed “Father of American Anthropology” Franz Boas (1858-1942). Boas was revolutionary in his rejection of scientific racism and evolutionary methods of studying culture.