From the Archives

Doing political and social work in Harlem with customary zest and vigor, Zora Neale Hurston ’28 is a young woman of many interests — writing, anthropological research, politics, and people. Born in the first incorporated Negro town in America, Eatonville, Florida, this daughter of a preacher is one of her native state’s most brilliant citizens, and one of Barnard’s most distinguished alumnae.

Chatting for over an hour and a half about Barnard, anthropology, and the state of the nation, she expressed a natural concern about helping her own people. She said, “It’s the old idea, trite but true, of helping people to help themselves that will be the only salvation of the Negro in this country. No one from the outside can do it for him. It’s too simple to say, even in the South, that the picture is all Negroes on one side and all whites on the other. I come from the South and I know the conflicts within and between the Negro groups, white groups, and Negro-white groups.”

That’s one reason why she’s worked out the very concrete plan of the “Block-Mothers.” Knowing that economic conditions force most Harlem mothers to work outside the home and to leave their children on the streets for long hours every day, Miss Hurston has organized several areas where one mother will take care of all the children on that block for the day. Trips to parks, beaches, and play centers are planned, and if any child can’t afford the picnic lunch or carfare required, the money is forthcoming from interested citizens. Very young children and infants are cared for in the apartment of a young mother or elderly woman who no longer works outside. So far the plan has been successful, but Miss Hurston feels the idea should spread, and that it must spread by example and pride of accomplishment.

A “Block-Mother” plan has the intimacy of family life because it keeps brothers and sisters together, and all ages are included. Neighborhood feeling is also inculcated because all the children come from the same street. To observers it is a good idea for any neighborhood, but particularly for large cities where there is so 

little community pride and civic responsibility. In areas with a high rate of juvenile delinquency because of broken homes and lack of parental supervision, it is practically a necessity.

Back in 1932 Miss Hurston arranged a concert at the John Golden Theatre to present Negro spirituals and work songs as they would be sung by Negroes. She says their concert music is not usually the same as they sing among themselves. The concert confirmed her opinion that people did want to hear the genuine thing. One of her dreams has been to bring an African faculty to America to teach music and dancing. “You see, no matter how much talent a Negro may have, if he is sent to a white conservatory, he is ruined. He gains technique, yes. But he loses the flavor and quality that sets him apart from white artists. What should happen is that this native quality be increased rather than obliterated. That is the only way we can ever hope to add anything to Western arts,” she said.

This winter Zora Hurston will tour the South intensively and later Central America, to record folk music and legends. Central America is a particularly neglected field, she finds, and the Library of Congress has commissioned her to fill the need for cultural material for the national archives. One of her books, published in 1938, Tell My Horse, was the result of her work in Haiti where she was able, as an initiate, to get facts about voodoo worship that a white person would never be able to secure.

At Barnard she majored in anthropology under Dr. Franz Boas and to satisfy Barnard graduation requirements she returned to the South to do research in the field of Negro folklore, and she amassed a large amount of material. At one time in her career she became secretary to Fannie Hurst and went to live with her. An undisputed talent for creative writing was thereby encouraged and developed.

Recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1936 and a Book-of-the-Month Club award in 1937, she has had great stimulus in her writing career. Her first published novel, Jonah’s Gourd Vine, was accorded a warm reception by the critics. Other novels include Mules and Men, Their Eyes Were Watching God, and Life of Moses. She is a member of the American Anthropological Society, the American Ethnological Society, the American Association for the Advancement of Science and the American Folklore Society. Her stories and articles have appeared in such magazines as Story, the Survey Graphic, the Journal of American Folklore, and The World Tomorrow. A new novel, still untitled, will be on the forthcoming list of the J.B. Lippincott Company.

A challenging personality blend of artist and scientist, Zora Hurston believes that the political arena is the place for all of us today if we wish to save democracy as we know it in the world. Fighting against the natural apathy of women, whether Negro or white, who vote as their husbands and family do without questioning the issues involved, is her particular job right now. Her foes are the common ones of complacency and ignorance. As a scientist she views the future perfectibility of the human race with skepticism, but as an artist and a woman she is doing her best to lift it out of the mire of stupidity and torpor in which it so often struggles.