The Road That Ran Down The Center Of Eatonville

Jacksonville is where she where Hurston “was now a little colored girl.”(14) The pain that discrimination can cause did not affect Hurston her self-pride and individuality did not allow racial difference to effect her negatively. Hurston writes “I am not tragically colored. There is no great sorrow dammed up in my soul, I do not mind at all. I do not belong to the sobbing school of Negrohood”. (14) Hurston describes how someone is always reminding her of the past transgressions of the White people. Her response is simply that the past is in the past and we must live in the present. Hurston does describe moments when she feels racial difference and her experiences with it. There are time where being amount thousands of white people the author is “a dark rock surged upon, and overswept.”(14) Additionally there are the times where the author is among just one white person in a sea of black people as she describes in her different experience with a friend at a Jazz Club. With all of these situations of difference the author describes not changing and remaining the same. The author explains pride in oneself multiple times throughout the essay stating “I am the eternal feminine” (14) and “How can any deny themselves the pleasure of my

In the short stories, “Sweat” and “The Gilded Six-bit”, by Zora Neale Hurston, both take place in her hometown of Eatonville, Florida, during the early 1900s. Eatonville was one of the first towns founded by African Americans in the US. Because they are set in the same town, the stories’ characters speak in a broken, English dialect of the South, to reflect the era and location in which they lived. These stories depict identical circumstances with different consequences. They illustrate the betrayal of adultery within both of the marriages of Sykes and Delia, from “Sweat”, and Missy May and Joe from “The Gilded Six-Bits”. Furthermore,

Purpose- Hurston’s purpose is to demonstrate that she is proud of her color. She does not need the bragging rights of having Native American ancestry, nor does she ‘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.’

Hurston, on the other hand, lived in a town where only blacks lived until she was thirteen years old. Therefore, she only knew the “black” self. There was no second identity to contend with. She states that “white people differed from colored to me only in that they rode through town and never lived there.”2 She does not feel anger when she is discriminated against. She only wonders how anyone can not want to be in her company. She “has no separate feeling about being an American citizen and colored” (Hurston 1712).

Some time passed, she turned up in Baltimore where she lied about her age to finish high school. After which she enrolled in Howard University in 1920 where earned an associate’s degree. She then transferred to Barnard College and after graduating in 1928, she started coursework for a PHD in Anthropology at Columbia University. Some years later, she moved to Harlem deep in the middle of the Harlem Renaissance, where she became a fixture in its thriving art scene along with friends, Langston Hughes and Countee Cullen who she was known to be acquainted with. She wrote several short stories and plays, such as “Mules and Men”, “The Great Day”, “From Sun to Sun” and “Mule Bone”. She also a few novels, two highly regarded works of anthropology and an autobiography titled, “Dust Tracks on a Road”, which has had some controversy on whether some parts of her life’s story in truly accurate. One example would be that she claimed to have written “Their Eyes Were Watching God”, in seven weeks “under internal pressure” while on a Guggenheim fellowship to Haiti to study the folklore. Hurston struggled through the last years of her life, as she continued to write but

Hurston intended to “show the beauty and wealth of genuine Negro material” as a response to the stereotyping of black people in literature (Draper 1068-1069). Sykes is shown as a successful independent black man which was something not seen often in Hurston’s time. Her material mainly focused on black and black relations over black and white relations. By focusing on the successful side of black life that she grew up with, Hurston was able to show black youth a potential future for themselves that they may not have thought possible with their current situation. Condemning those who oppressed African Americans and defying traditional norms was Hurston’s way of disrupting the social climate of the time (Champion). In her works, she was able to shine a light on societal problems that she believed needed fixing. Literature was the only way to fight because as a black woman she had no other ways to fight without incarceration. Hurston intended to present the side of black people that many white people did not see, her writings were”important because they…[presented] characters who…[were] undeniably and realistically human” (Draper 1068). Hurston had to provide realistic black characters in a time that black people were still seen as worthless by many. She wanted people to understand that white people and black people were just people. Hurston wrote good characters, not good people, to show that all races of people had bad eggs. The characters in “Sweat” were very realistic, whether they be gossiping on the porch or abusing their wife, they are acting as real people do. They may not be doing things that are morally right, i.e. being abusive, but that is a fault in humanity that all races are guilty of. Hurston had seen many different types of people throughout her life and was able to express these different personalities with expertise. Knowing how to write a character is just as important as

Taking place in the 1920’s, Harlem Renaissance was a period of time where cultural, social, and artistic expansion took place in the American society. Hurston’s uniqueness led her to write about the problems of individuals, particularly white ones and black ones. In her own words, she stated, “Many Negroes criticise my book, because I did not make it a lecture on the race problem. I have ceased to think in terms of race; I think only in terms of individuals. I am interested in you now, not as a Negro man but as a man” (“Although her reputation”). In addition, Hurston portrayed the lives of black people as constantly miserable, downtrodden and deprived. For instance, in Hurston’s novel, Their Eyes Were Watching God, the main character, Janie Crawford, finds her second husband, Joe Starks, only to mislead her life. Janie figures out that she once again lacks the love she had longed for. Joe considered Janie to be his possession. He expected Janie to be a well-behaved wife, who would not speak up for herself or disobey him. He additionally expected her to follow every order he had for her, such as forbidding her to interact and play checkers with people (“The most prevalent”). During this time, men were showing off their masculinity by ordering their wives around and ruling over them. However, Janie refused to accept herself to be oppressed, rather “outspoken and headstrong” (Zora Neale Hurston’s). Hurston is trying to portray that women should have the courage to speak up for

Joe Starks is representative of a much different sphere in terms of African-Americans and their ways of dealing with white cruelty. He is quick to tell Janie that he has "been working for white folks all his life," and it becomes evident to the reader through his improvements of the town; the light post, the general store, the post office that he is a man making plans of bringing Eatonville closer to the white world. Sounding like Mrs. Turner, he chastises town residents for casting doubt on his plans for a post office: "The white man don't have tuh keep us down. Us keeps our own selves down" (Hurston, 39).

    Comparison of Hurston's life and work is ironic. Though Janie, having passed through dominance and loss, had a 2 story home and money in the bank to come home to, Hurston had none. Hurston's later life was that of the economically disadvantaged-- what Ellison, Wright, and other male black authors penned their novels in protest of. Brilliant, talented, she could not rise above the economic limits imposed on her and thus a talented anthropologist with two Guggenheims ended up buried in an unmarked grave.

Zora Neale Hurston was born and raised in Eatonville, Florida which was the first all-black town in the United States to be incorporated and self-governed. Due to Hurston growing up in an all-black community, she was protected from racism. She states that the only white people she knew were the ones passing through the town going to or coming from Orlando. When she moved from the town of Eatonville to Jacksonville, she was introduced to a different lifestyle where she was

Zora Neale Hurston was so proud to be from the black community that she mentioned it in her writings; she even changed it to her birthplace. Eatonville, Florida, had a massive impact on Zora’s life. It shaped her life and writing style. Hurston explains: "Anyway, the force from somewhere in Space which commands you to write in the first place, gives you no choice. You take up the pen when you are told, and write what is commanded. There is no agony like bearing an untold story inside you."

Hurston prides herself on who she is because of her background. Her identity of being a black woman in a world

In some of Hurston’s works she acknowledges Eatonville, which was the first all-black community in America that she moved to when she was only three years old (Kimmons, 3). Hurston viewed Eatonville as a place where blacks could ultimately be themselves without having to conform to the norms of a white society (Kimmons, 1). Hurston was protected from the realisms of judgement and disgust towards African Americans; since Eatonville was described to be somewhat safe from lynchings and other violence related to racism. After

At the beginning of the essay Hurston opens up with the statement that she is colored and that she offers no extenuating circumstances to the fact except that she is the only Negro in the U.S. whose grandfather was not an Indian chief. She presents a striking notion that she was not born colored, but that she later became colored during her life. Hurston then delves into her childhood in Eatonville, Florida an exclusively colored town where she did not realize her color then. Through anecdotes describing moments when she greeted neighbors, sang and danced in the streets, and viewed her surroundings from a comfortable spot on her porch, she just liked the white tourists going through the town. Back then, she was “everybody’s Zora” (p. 903), free from the alienating feeling of difference. However, when her mother passed away she had to leave home and

Hurston’s characters have idealistic dialect for an African American in that time period; correctly depicting any stereotypes that might fall on the situation. The slang and slurs used throughout the characters dialogue makes the tale more