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Decolonize Black History Month

Zora Neale Hurston Fieldwork 1928

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Day 29: Zora Neale Hurston's Fieldwork Best known for her fiction work such as the novel Their Eyes Were Watching God (1937), Zora Neale Hurston also did intensive research and archiving of southern Black American life.
Mules and Men (1935) is anthropological study of Hurston’s hometown Eatonville, Florida and the hoodoo history in New Orleans. The book is a record of Hurston’s travels to both cities. It includes fables, songs, and recipes indigenous to these areas. The topics of voodoo and hoodoo come up often in Hurston’s research. She wrote a column called “Hoodoo and Black Magic” (1957-1959) for the Fort Pierce Chronicle and would later write entire book on the subject, titled Tell My Horse 1938).
Tell My Horse shared her research into voodoo in the American south. Rather than take an encyclopedic look at all aspects of voodoo, Hurston strove to share a glimpse of the essence of th religion with the world. Hurston traveled to Jamaica and Haiti in order to learn more about voodoo. This travel was funded by the Guggenheim Foundation.
In 1938 Hurston received funding from the Federal Writer’s Project, a subset of the Works Progress Administration, to document Black folklore in Florida. She reported on local history, songs, stories, and other traditions of Black people throughout the state. She wrote about different subcultures such as the turpentine workers. The project culminated in a recording session at the Clara White Mission in Jacksonville, Florida. Here, people were invited to document their culture first hand. You can hear Hurston singing a selection of songs at this link. In addition, a guidebook called The Florida Negro was released.
Though not published until well after her death, Hurston's Every Tongue Got to Confess (2001) is a culmination of her rigorous anthropological work. The book is a compilation of folk tales, written in the vernacular, that Hurston collected during her years of travel.