Research is formalized curiosity. It is poking and prying with a purpose.

Why do we honor Dr. Zora Neale Hurston???? Well, there are so many reasons

why we, the Zora Neale Hurston Florida Education Foundation, Inc. try to keep the

Zora’s legacy alive. She is one of the most prolific American authors during the twentieth

and now the twenty-first centuries! She has written novels, plays, short stories, essays,

folklore, poetry, an autobiography, biographies, journalism, reviews, letters, and much

more. Many have rediscovered Hurston’s work which is far-reaching and dynamic.

Hurston herself said, “There is no agony like bearing an untold story inside you”

(Hurston). We do believe that she relieved that agony during her final days in Fort Pierce,

Florida while she laboriously revised Herod The Great, her last book project – a

biography about King Herod.

Hurston is often associated with the Harlem Renaissance because she finds herself

amongst the rich and talented Blacks and other individuals who converged on Harlem,

New York during the roaring 1920’s. However, Hurston prided herself on researching

and writing about what she called “the Negro farthest down,” the every-day Blacks who

lived in the South and throughout the diaspora - subject to the challenges and

opportunities of subjugation and disenfranchisement. As a result of Hurston’s

commitment to this population, she has become a highly decorated author even in her

death! Although she died in 1960, she posthumously released texts have received great

acclaim. Barracoon is the story of the last Black man to have lived through the Middle

Passage, named Cudjoe Lewis, who was brought to Alabama right before the Civil War.

Hurston interviewed Mr. Lewis in the 1920s.

As a trailblazing cultural Anthropologist, Zora also conducted significant

fieldwork in the Caribbean. She received two Guggenheims to study in Haiti and

Jamaica. And she also spent a significant amount of time in The Bahamas and Honduras

studying indigenous culture. She definitely lived by the motto, “You got to go there to

know there!” We hope that you, too, would travel to her final resting place here in Fort

Pierce, Florida to see the Zora Dust tracks Trail, including all of the sites associated with

Hurston’s final days on earth.