Zora Neale Hurston
Research is formalized curiosity. It is poking and prying with a purpose.
Zora Neale Hurston
Fort Pierce’s Lincoln Park area was a major hub for African-Americans in St.
Lucie County, the surrounding area, and even throughout the United states. According to
the City of Fort Pierce’s official website:
“During its heyday in the 1950s and 1960s, Avenue D was the main corridor in the
Village of Lincoln Park – it was St. Lucie County’s bustling center for African
American-owned shops, restaurants, businesses and a theater. Today, the area is
experiencing revitalization, celebrating its rich cultural history and making
progress to again become the center of pride for the community.”
https://cityoffortpierce.com/702/Lincoln-Park-Revitalization-Project
To further complement Lincoln Park’s ‘heyday’ the now famous and world-renowned
anthropologist and author, Zora Neale Hurston, lived in this area from 1957 to 1960.
Zora Neale Hurston
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.