Passage V

Zora Neale Hurston, Folklorist

The Harlem Renaissance author Zora Neale Hurston is well known for her novels, especially Their Eyes Were Watching God, however, she was also a devoted chronicler of African American folklore. In her collection of Southern folktales, Mules and Men, Hurston, who was born and raised in Eatonville, Florida, suggested her unique qualification for this study when she said she had "the map of Dixie on my tongue."

While she was studying anthropology at Barnard College in New York that Hurston decided to hook up again with the customs, songs, stories, and games she had learned as a child. By her own account, she took the wrong approach to gathering folklore when, in 1927, she first returned to the South. When she asked them if they knew any folktales, they glanced at her nice car and "city" clothes, shook their heads, and told her to look elsewhere. On her next trip, she headed straight to her hometown, where she already knew the people and the people knew her.

In Eatonville, her hometown, Hurston went to places where she knew the oral tradition would be thriving. She eagerly sought out the porch of the general store. (69) As people gathered at the store her first day there, a wonderful outpouring of tales begun as members of the crowd vied for their turn to tell stories.

Hurston also visited Polk County, Florida, where she sponsored contests for the most imaginative tall tale. The winners received prizes, and Hurston collected a wide vastness of folklore. After the contests, people came to her on their own to share even more stories.

Many of the tales Hurston heard during her Southern trips revealed interesting information: why the woodpecker has a red head, why the alligator is black, or how the snake got its rattles. Other tales were exaggeratedly and humorous accounts of harsh bosses and smarter workers, or of trickster animals such as, Brer Rabbit and his cousins. In part because of Hurston's work, these vibrant stories live on.