Zora Stood Tall and So Will I
Or How to Preserve a Legacy
“Sometimes, I feel discriminated against, but it does not make me angry. It merely astonishes me. How can any deny themselves the pleasure of my company? It’s beyond me.” ~Zora Neale Hurston
Such a grandiose statement as the one above should have been one of those books full of quotes by great Americans that have become ingrained in the American psyche: George Washington’s “I cannot tell a lie” when caught after chopping down the cherry tree comes to mind, even though that has been proven a tall tale.
January 7th would have been Zora Neale Hurston’s 69th birthday. She also died at the end of January. Finally, last month, PBS published a documentary chronicling her life, something long overdue. For this reason, among others, I decided to dedicate my post to Black History Month with a tribute to one of my favorite literary icons.
In my sophomore year of college, I first read Their Eyes Were Watching God thanks to my African-American literature professor, a woman who claimed not only African-American roots but the intersectionality of having First American tribal roots. This professor greeted us as a class with “I See You” to which we would respond “We Are Here.” The impact of that still resonates with me today, even though the impact of her reasoning only just reinforced itself as I typed the words. Those class affirmations are the ancestral cries of “Representation Matters” and “Black Lives Matter.”
That semester, I had the good fortune of taking not only a literature class steeped in the African-American tradition but also an African American history course. Between these two classes, I was writing down more books from Black authors and creators than I’d ever known existed. Again, even though it has been twenty-five years since these two instructors graced us with their wealth of knowledge, I am still reeling from the lessons that reverberated through my memory and what they were really trying to teach outside of the curriculum, and that was that we were here long before the Western cannon acknowledged us. In fact, as a researching adult, I can further say that we not only predated the Western canon but contributed to it in major ways, but much like the rest of Black civilization, had it stolen from us, coopted, and bastardized into whiteness.
I grew up in a rural town in Virginia. When people ask me what it was like going to school, I joke that Virginia thinks it won The Civil War. But the only part of it that was a joke was the educational system. An example of this joke is that there once three major field trips: Jamestown, one of the first Virginia settlements; Williamsburg, home of Busch Gardens and Water Country USA; and Stratford Hall, birthplace of one of Virginia’s most famous citizens. For Jamestown, the truth that the first settlement was burned down by a slave insurrection is not shared and is a fact I only discovered last year. For Williamsburg, I learned about the art of glassblowing and not about the fact that a lot of the current resorts are still referred to as plantations. Finally, Stratford only recently in the past twenty years included its slave quarters as part of the manor where Robert E. Lee was born. Yes, that Robert E. Lee, commander of the Confederate Army, in spite of the fact that George Washington’s birthplace was only a few miles away.
Virginia is so steeped in Confederate history and glory that it was not until the deaths of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor that many of the Confederate generals were removed from one of Richmond’s (the capital of the Confederacy) main thoroughfares, Monument Avenue after much debate and protest.
I say all this to say that in terms of anything to do with Black people, the Virginia educational system had not only a lack of diversity but a decided erasure of the Black experience as anything but slaves, and even the mention of slaves was done in subtle ways, such as the inclusion of plantation on old manor houses.
There was not even a mention of Harriet Tubman or Frederick Douglass, even though geographically, these two American heroes were only one state away in Maryland. And there was definitely no mention of Malcolm X. In school, the only Black person I remember reading a blurb about was Crispus Attacks, the first Black death by police reported in the United States.
For those wondering if Martin Luther King, the seemingly acceptable Negro, was taught, he may have gotten an honorable mention during Black History Month, but much more attention was paid to George Washington Carver and Booker T. Washington, other examples of acceptable Negroes because of their contributions to agriculture, and even that information was limited to the invention of peanut butter and new farming techniques. To this day, many people in Virginia do not get the day off for MLK Day, even though it is a national holiday.
I, like so many other Americans, was culturally ignorant to the contributions of people of color, thanks to the failings of the American K-12 educational system, which focuses more heavily on spreading American myths than truths.
Like so many other marginalized populations, women are often forgotten in the narrative of historical experiences. Even today, more and more women’s experiences are being highlighted and brought to the forefront of knowledge, long lost in the annals of history. The most recent I can think of is Katherine Johnson from Hidden Figures knowledge. Though her history is 70 years old, the truth of her story was not exposed until the early 21st century and has since gone on to become not only a book with different reader levels but also a major motion picture starring Taraji P. Henson as Katherine. The original Katherine Johnson is gone from us now, and look how we almost lost her story before she left this earthly realm. She was given her flowers.
Zora might have been lost in obscurity, but was resurrected. We have another prolific writer to thank for this, and I must stop and give Alice Walker her flowers right now, as the author The Color Purple, a book I just managed to tackle last year, made a rediscovery of Zora Neale Hurston. Her article, “In Search of Zora Neale Hurston” (later titled “Looking for Zora”) debuted in Ms. Magazine in 1975 and would later become part of an anthology of works.
Fifteen years after Zora's death, Walker’s essay would detail her physical journey to her gravesite, overgrown with weeds in a state cemetery. Zora had died penniless and alone.
This is the exact opposite of the life that Zora led. She was born in Eatonville, Florida, which is distinguished as one of the first Black cities in the United States. Those who did not grow up as minorities do not truly understand the significance of growing up in an all-Black township. It gives a level of confidence. It’s how White people feel every day without being cognizant of the privilege associated with it.
While she had that confidence, she was also aware that as a woman, she would have a hard time navigating through the world without an education, and as a result, ended up changing her age to get into school. As a result, she would have ties to not only Florida but also to the Washington DC mecca of Howard University and Baynard College in New York.
One of her most famous works is Their Eyes Were Watching God, which was my first exposure to her writing, and is taught across campuses now, and was made into a movie starring Halle Berry. More impressive than the story was all its subtle nuances and southern dialect, which was of course easy for me to interpret since so many in the town where I grew up had that same cadence. Years later, when I taught my first literature class, I was ecstatic to come across a Zora Neale Hurston short story in the book I had to use for class and exposed my students to her.
Even more fascinating than Zora’s fictional life was her real life. Anecdotally, it was said that she owned any room she walked in. I imagine her much as I do Jenifer Lewis, who can walk into a room and shout bam! Zora’s the kind of woman who would have been just as at ease in an upper-class salon as she would have been in a speakeasy.
It’s one of my favorite pictures. In black and white with a chevron background, she looks straight at the camera, her eyes keeping a secret that is only hinted at with a smile, one that graces the edges of her lips and parts them, as if she’s about to let you in on what she knows and you don’t.
More telling than her expression is her carriage. Her bearing tells you that whatever she has to say, you’d better be listening. The sweater dress and beads she wears are similar to an outfit I have today. And she’s wearing a brimmed hat, set at just enough of an angle to let you know she has spunk, creating an in-real-life Black precursor to Carmen Sandiego.
I would go on about the wonder that is Zora, but will instead leave you with this gem of an article I found that chronicles her life as well as a short story from the legend herself, the very one I taught in that literature class.
Addendum, 2/14: Just the day after originally publishing this Substack, I just learned that Zora’s primary biographer, Valerie Boyd died last year around this time (literally on the 12th). It’s like she was calling me from the grave to share more.