An American Master: Zora Neale Hurston

2008-04-07
By Ronda Racha Penrice

     Three years ago, Oprah Winfrey introduced her fan base to Zora Neale Hurston through the film version of Hurston’s classic novel, Their Eyes Were Watching God, starring Halle Berry for ABC. In the 22nd season of their American Masters series, PBS takes that introduction a huge step forward with "Zora Neale Hurston: Jump at the Sun."
     It’s impossible to overstate Zora Neale Hurston’s contribution to African American culture and history. She was much more than a novelist. Instead, she was an active recorder of not just history but of culture. In a time when, as Henry Louis Gates notes, much of African American literature targeted white audiences, Hurston bucked the trend. She refused to be “tragically colored,” as she termed it, when the “Negro as a social problem” was very much in vogue. Back then, celebrating the everyday Black man and woman was highly controversial and Hurston was usually knee high in it. Richard Wright and many of her other contemporaries, for example, panned Their Eyes Were Watching God, now considered her greatest work, when it was released in 1937.
     Too few people know that she accompanied Alan Lomax’s team as it combed much of the South for American culture and folklore. Some of the great African American songs and folktales Lomax’s team collected in the 1940s are the product of Hurston’s frequently uncredited efforts. Because Hurston was an active participant who refused to leave the intimate knowledge she had of her subjects and subject matter behind, she recorded African American culture in ways that were arguably more authentic than any previous efforts. Still she suffered from the power dynamics of the times. So what she was more knowledgeable than Lomax or his son when it came to Black history and culture? Without question, Alan Lomax is an extremely important folklorist whose contributions to American culture are vast. But, Hurston was just as integral when it came to documenting African American life, and she hasn’t always received her just due, one of the strongest points made in Jump at the Sun.
     It also sheds much light on her own colorful life, correcting so many of the myths that she herself promoted. Hurston relished being born in Eatonville, Florida, an all Black town, when she was actually born in Notasulga, Alabama. Her childhood years in Eatonville though guided her life. Cocooned in a nurturing, all-Black experience for much of her life gave Hurston the strength to be every bit her extraordinary self. Still a teenager when she began fending for herself, Hurston literally made a way out of no way. Up North, she pursued her education, landing at Morgan State before attracting the attention of Alain Locke at Howard who was responsible for her work appearing in Opportunity. From there she made it to the big time, New York City, where she and Langston Hughes put some sizzle in the much celebrated Harlem Renaissance. 
     Acknowledged as the first Black graduate of Barnard College, sister school to Columbia College, Columbia University, Hurston studied under Franz Boas, one of anthropology’s most influential stewards. Hurston’s intellect alone isn’t what made her memorable; her contradictory stances played a huge role. Hurston was prone to do what she had to do, even pandering to her white patrons, the folks who ponyed up the money that allowed her to collect the Negro folklore she deemed so important. Gates, in "Jump at the Sun," refuses to forgive Hurston for such displays, which, as one letter demonstrates, included referring to herself as a “pickaninny.” Interestingly, Hurston never wrote her novels while she accepted patronage. Instead, the facts she collected during that time later made its way into creative work that she alone owned. Alice Walker, one of Hurston’s foremost champions, and Maya Angelou rightly recognize Hurston’s burdens and accomplishments. In Hurston, they undoubtedly see a literary foremother who championed women and the South when it was extremely taboo to do so. 
     Rocked by unfounded accusations that she had molested young boys, Hurston retreated to the South in her later years, preferring to live on her houseboat. In lean times, she took a job as a maid in Ft. Pierce, Florida, once again making headlines. New writing gigs followed that scandal but times had changed and her voice, so they thought, was out of step. Ultimately, she stood up for her right to be an individual. She wrapped herself around a Black world, even in white company, feeling not the least bit embarrassed to be “colored me.” She refused to play victim and that should never go out of style.

Jump at the Sun airs Wednesday, April 9 on PBS.

 Veteran freelance writer and self-diagnosed television junkie Ronda Racha Penrice is the author of African American History For Dummies, which includes chapters on film/television and African American literature.