Zora Neale Hurston was born in Eatonville, Florida on January 7, 1891. She was the fifth of eight children. Zora said growing up in Eatonville, an all-Negro town, gave her a certain kind of strength that most Negroes during that period did not experience. Zora was free.

Zora received her undergraduate degree from Barnard College, where she studied under anthropologist Franz Boas. She was part of the Harlem Renaissance, and traveled all over the south collecting Negro folklore. She received the Guggenheim Fellowship, joined the Federal Writers project in Florida, published four novels and an autobiography and worked as a story consultant for Paramount Pictures. She was most active between 1930 and 1940.

In 1959 she suffered a stroke and entered a nursing home. On January 28, 1960 she died and was buried in an unmarked grave in a segregated cemetery in Fort Pierce, Florida.

Although Zora died in 1960, her work was rediscovered in the 70s by a new generation of writers led by Alice Walker. Zora once wrote " I am not tragically colored. There is no great sorrow dammed up in my soul, nor lurking behind my eyes. I do not mind at all. I do not belong to the sobbing school of Negrohood who hold that nature somehow has given them a lowdown dirty deal and whose feelings are all hurt about it...No I do not weep at the world--I am too busy sharpening my oyster knife."