Zora Neale Hurston
African-American novelist
January 7, 1903
Born in Eatonville, FL, Hurston became part of the Harlem Renaissance, the black literati in New York City. Besides being a writer of novels – Their Eyes Were Watching God, Dust Tracks on a Road, Mules and Men – and short stories, she was also a folklorist who travelled to Latin American and the Caribbean to learn more about her roots, and she received degrees from Howard University and Barnard, as well as a Guggenheim Fellowship. Yet, she spent most of her life in Florida and died there in a welfare home in 1960. The writer Alice Walker resurrected her works and interest in her in the 1970s.