Content Warning: This section discusses slavery and anti-Black racism, including lynching, in the Jim Crow South, as well as racist slurs. 

Zora Neale Hurston (1891-1960) was an American writer and anthropologist. She was born in Alabama, but moved to Eatonville, Florida, when she was a toddler. Hurston sometimes claimed to have been born in Eatonville; she also claimed various birth years ranging from 1901 to 1910. Her father was a preacher who also served as Eatonville’s mayor. In 1904, Hurston’s mother died, and her father and stepmother were not very supportive of her. Hurston was not able to complete her high school education until 1918, after spending several years working. Hurston then studied anthropology at Barnard College. She would go on to publish a number of anthropology papers, often in collaboration with noted anthropologist Franz Boas. Hurston married three times; her marriages lasted anywhere from a few months to a few years. 

In the mid-1920s, Hurston became one of the most notable writers in the Harlem Renaissance, alongside Langston Hughes, Wallace Thurman, and others. She published several novels, the most famous of which is Their Eyes Were Watching God (1937), about the life of a Black woman named Janie Crawford.