WEBVTT 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:02.839 Okay, let's unpack this. Welcome to the deep 00:00:02.839 --> 00:00:05.580 dive, where we take the densest stack of sources, 00:00:05.799 --> 00:00:08.500 the articles, the biographies, the academic papers, 00:00:08.640 --> 00:00:11.539 and pull out the absolutely essential nuggets 00:00:11.539 --> 00:00:14.240 of knowledge you need to be instantly well -informed. 00:00:14.400 --> 00:00:17.640 And today, we are profiling one of the most fascinating, 00:00:17.839 --> 00:00:21.190 brilliant, um... uncompromising and ultimately 00:00:21.190 --> 00:00:23.910 one of the most tragic figures of 20th century 00:00:23.910 --> 00:00:26.949 American culture. Zora Neale Hurston. Zora Neale 00:00:26.949 --> 00:00:29.030 Hurston. And if you know her name, you probably 00:00:29.030 --> 00:00:31.870 know her as the literary giant, right? Yeah. 00:00:31.989 --> 00:00:34.530 The author who gave us their eyes were Watching 00:00:34.530 --> 00:00:38.250 God in 1937. Which is a masterpiece. It is. But 00:00:38.250 --> 00:00:41.170 to stop there is to miss the staggering complexity 00:00:41.170 --> 00:00:43.850 of her actual career. Our sources reveal a woman 00:00:43.850 --> 00:00:45.890 who didn't just write novels. She fundamentally 00:00:45.890 --> 00:00:48.289 reshaped how African -American culture was studied. 00:00:48.409 --> 00:00:50.399 Right. She was a formally trained anthropologist, 00:00:50.500 --> 00:00:52.799 a dedicated folklorist, a pioneering essayist, 00:00:52.799 --> 00:00:55.619 and even an early documentary filmmaker. I mean, 00:00:55.640 --> 00:00:58.039 her output profoundly shaped Africana studies 00:00:58.039 --> 00:01:00.399 and ethnography in ways we are still, you know, 00:01:00.399 --> 00:01:03.479 still grasping today. Exactly. We have this incredible 00:01:03.479 --> 00:01:06.500 duality right at the core of her identity. On 00:01:06.500 --> 00:01:08.840 the one hand, she held a degree from Barnard 00:01:08.840 --> 00:01:11.439 and Columbia, placing her in the highest echelons 00:01:11.439 --> 00:01:14.120 of academia. And on the other, she spent years 00:01:14.120 --> 00:01:16.920 sleeping on porches, collecting stories, and 00:01:16.920 --> 00:01:19.140 participating in rituals in the deepest parts 00:01:19.140 --> 00:01:21.519 of the American South and the Caribbean. And 00:01:21.519 --> 00:01:24.739 that dual nature. is the key to our deep dive 00:01:24.739 --> 00:01:28.400 mission today. Her core academic goal, which 00:01:28.400 --> 00:01:30.700 was largely influenced by her mentors at Columbia, 00:01:30.900 --> 00:01:33.879 was revolutionary for its time. What was it specifically? 00:01:34.180 --> 00:01:36.420 To study African -American and Caribbean communities 00:01:36.420 --> 00:01:39.280 from the inside. to treat their culture, their 00:01:39.280 --> 00:01:41.959 language, their spiritual practices, including 00:01:41.959 --> 00:01:44.700 hoodoo and voodoo, with immense respect. This 00:01:44.700 --> 00:01:46.680 is long before that was the standard. Oh, long 00:01:46.680 --> 00:01:49.239 before. We need to explore how she managed to 00:01:49.239 --> 00:01:52.599 merge that literary genius, that raw conversational 00:01:52.599 --> 00:01:55.040 voice of her subjects, with the rigorous demands 00:01:55.040 --> 00:01:58.680 of academia, and then why this monumental figure 00:01:58.680 --> 00:02:01.219 essentially vanished into obscurity for decades, 00:02:01.359 --> 00:02:03.599 only to be resurrected later. And when we talk 00:02:03.599 --> 00:02:06.579 about volume, her output is just... It's almost 00:02:06.579 --> 00:02:08.680 hard to comprehend. It crossed almost every genre 00:02:08.680 --> 00:02:11.280 boundary. I mean, you've got four major novels, 00:02:11.439 --> 00:02:14.120 including her masterwork. Then there's her compelling 00:02:14.120 --> 00:02:17.560 autobiography, Dust Tracks on a Road. The groundbreaking 00:02:17.560 --> 00:02:21.099 ethnographies, Mules and Men and Tell My Horse. 00:02:21.580 --> 00:02:25.979 Over 50 short stories and plays. And we're still 00:02:25.979 --> 00:02:28.500 discovering her work. Right, like the folktale 00:02:28.500 --> 00:02:30.879 collection Every Tongue Got to Confess and the 00:02:30.879 --> 00:02:33.919 essential narrative Baratun. Her life was this 00:02:33.919 --> 00:02:36.360 constant, almost exhausting movement between 00:02:36.360 --> 00:02:39.919 high literary culture, rigorous academic pursuit, 00:02:40.080 --> 00:02:42.800 and deep community immersion. It's a miracle 00:02:42.800 --> 00:02:45.400 she accomplished half of what she did, especially 00:02:45.400 --> 00:02:47.460 when you consider the financial volatility of 00:02:47.460 --> 00:02:49.719 her life. Okay, so let's start at the very beginning. 00:02:50.189 --> 00:02:52.449 Or perhaps what our sources suggest we could 00:02:52.449 --> 00:02:54.729 call the two beginnings of Zora Neale Hurston. 00:02:54.830 --> 00:02:57.009 A good way to put it. The physical facts tell 00:02:57.009 --> 00:03:00.349 us she was born on January 7, 1891. She was the 00:03:00.349 --> 00:03:03.210 fifth of eight children in Notosulga, Alabama. 00:03:03.770 --> 00:03:06.490 Now, this fact often gets glossed over, but it's 00:03:06.490 --> 00:03:08.729 crucial to understand her context. It really 00:03:08.729 --> 00:03:11.030 is. Both sets of her grandparents had been born 00:03:11.030 --> 00:03:13.389 into slavery. This was not far -removed history 00:03:13.389 --> 00:03:16.509 for her. Not at all. Her father, John Hurston, 00:03:16.629 --> 00:03:18.949 began as a sharecropper, then became a Baptist 00:03:18.949 --> 00:03:21.810 preacher, and later a carpenter, while her mother, 00:03:22.009 --> 00:03:24.449 Lucienne Potts, was a schoolteacher. But that 00:03:24.449 --> 00:03:27.330 physical birthplace, notice Olga, is far less 00:03:27.330 --> 00:03:30.199 important than the geography of her soul. The 00:03:30.199 --> 00:03:32.479 place that truly shaped her worldview and became 00:03:32.479 --> 00:03:34.759 the fundamental setting for so many of her greatest 00:03:34.759 --> 00:03:37.539 stories. Eatonville, Florida. Eatonville. Her 00:03:37.539 --> 00:03:39.740 family moved there in 1894 when she was just 00:03:39.740 --> 00:03:42.099 three, and Eatonville was a truly exceptional 00:03:42.099 --> 00:03:45.379 place. It was established in 1887, making it 00:03:45.379 --> 00:03:47.800 one of the very first all -black incorporated 00:03:47.800 --> 00:03:50.699 towns in the United States. So she grew up in 00:03:50.699 --> 00:03:53.919 an environment where black people were the government, 00:03:54.080 --> 00:03:56.810 the law enforcement, the merchants. They defined 00:03:56.810 --> 00:04:00.189 the culture and the politics entirely. Wow. Precisely. 00:04:00.189 --> 00:04:03.270 Hurston grew up here, and, crucially, she described 00:04:03.270 --> 00:04:05.430 it as a place where African Americans could live 00:04:05.430 --> 00:04:08.330 and act as they desired, independent of the pervasive 00:04:08.330 --> 00:04:10.590 daily interference of white society and white 00:04:10.590 --> 00:04:13.310 supremacy that defined the rest of the Jim Crow 00:04:13.310 --> 00:04:16.089 South. So her father wasn't just a preacher there. 00:04:16.370 --> 00:04:19.610 No. He was elected mayor in 1897, and he was 00:04:19.610 --> 00:04:22.209 minister of the largest church, Macedonia Missionary 00:04:22.209 --> 00:04:25.620 Baptist. She experienced black self -governance 00:04:25.620 --> 00:04:27.920 and self -determination from childhood. Which 00:04:27.920 --> 00:04:30.319 explains why she so often claimed Eatonville 00:04:30.319 --> 00:04:33.620 as her actual birthplace. Exactly. She was effectively 00:04:33.620 --> 00:04:36.439 declaring it her mythic hometown. It was where 00:04:36.439 --> 00:04:38.899 her identity, her freedom, and her narrative 00:04:38.899 --> 00:04:42.050 truly began. And that independence, it seems, 00:04:42.250 --> 00:04:45.389 fed her intellectual curiosity very early on. 00:04:45.509 --> 00:04:48.649 We see the start of her lifelong literary awakening 00:04:48.649 --> 00:04:51.129 around 1901. Yeah, what happened was a group 00:04:51.129 --> 00:04:53.389 of northern school teachers visited Edenville 00:04:53.389 --> 00:04:55.990 and gave her books. She later described this 00:04:55.990 --> 00:04:58.769 influx of literature and mythology as a kind 00:04:58.769 --> 00:05:01.139 of personal birth. where she realized the world 00:05:01.139 --> 00:05:03.620 extended far beyond her town, but she already 00:05:03.620 --> 00:05:05.519 possessed the confidence to interact with it. 00:05:05.560 --> 00:05:07.060 That formative environment, though, it didn't 00:05:07.060 --> 00:05:09.560 last. Unfortunately, no. The pre -college years 00:05:09.560 --> 00:05:12.079 were incredibly turbulent. This is where we see 00:05:12.079 --> 00:05:14.019 the first cracks in her foundational structure. 00:05:14.500 --> 00:05:17.040 Her mother, who was her great intellectual influence, 00:05:17.399 --> 00:05:20.540 died in 1904. And her father remarried very quickly. 00:05:21.079 --> 00:05:24.399 Very quickly, he married Maddie Moj in 1905. 00:05:24.860 --> 00:05:27.259 And the whole thing was surrounded by scandal 00:05:27.259 --> 00:05:29.379 because he was rumored to have had relations 00:05:29.379 --> 00:05:32.240 with Moj before his first wife's death. And that 00:05:32.240 --> 00:05:35.360 turmoil directly impacted her education. It did. 00:05:35.500 --> 00:05:38.279 It led to a serious disruption. She was dismissed 00:05:38.279 --> 00:05:40.459 from a Baptist boarding school when the tuition 00:05:40.459 --> 00:05:43.139 payments just stopped. That must have been devastating, 00:05:43.300 --> 00:05:45.379 going from the daughter of the mayor and a respected 00:05:45.379 --> 00:05:48.399 preacher to... Suddenly being adrift. It was. 00:05:48.459 --> 00:05:50.639 She bounced around, lived with various family 00:05:50.639 --> 00:05:52.860 members, and eventually worked as a maid and 00:05:52.860 --> 00:05:55.139 wardrobe mistress for a touring theatrical company 00:05:55.139 --> 00:05:59.180 in 1916. This period of upheaval forced her to 00:05:59.180 --> 00:06:01.839 become fiercely resourceful and to, you know, 00:06:01.839 --> 00:06:04.069 quite literally, write her own ticket. Which 00:06:04.069 --> 00:06:06.389 brings us to the famous and necessary deception 00:06:06.389 --> 00:06:08.709 that altered the record of her life. Right. In 00:06:08.709 --> 00:06:12.009 1917, she's now 26 years old, and she wants to 00:06:12.009 --> 00:06:14.250 resume her formal education by attending night 00:06:14.250 --> 00:06:17.089 school at Morgan Academy in Baltimore. But to 00:06:17.089 --> 00:06:19.709 qualify for a free high school education, she 00:06:19.709 --> 00:06:22.689 had to appear much younger. So Zora Neale Hurston 00:06:22.689 --> 00:06:25.370 began claiming 1901 as her birth year. Shaming 00:06:25.370 --> 00:06:27.730 off a full decade. A critical decade. It made 00:06:27.730 --> 00:06:31.110 her 16 instead of 26. And this wasn't about vanity. 00:06:31.269 --> 00:06:34.620 It was a pragmatic decision. essential for securing 00:06:34.620 --> 00:06:36.959 her future. And the deception worked so well 00:06:36.959 --> 00:06:40.019 that 1901 was later incorrectly inscribed on 00:06:40.019 --> 00:06:42.480 her headstone. A lie that outlived her. She successfully 00:06:42.480 --> 00:06:45.160 graduated from high school in 1918. And this 00:06:45.160 --> 00:06:47.779 early act of self -invention is foundational 00:06:47.779 --> 00:06:50.660 to understanding her later literary and political 00:06:50.660 --> 00:06:54.000 life. She believed profoundly in the individual's 00:06:54.000 --> 00:06:56.100 right to shape their own narrative and destiny, 00:06:56.279 --> 00:06:59.269 regardless of bureaucratic reality. So armed 00:06:59.269 --> 00:07:01.790 with this new, younger identity, she begins her 00:07:01.790 --> 00:07:04.490 academic launch pad at Howard University, an 00:07:04.490 --> 00:07:07.310 HBCU in Washington, D .C., starting in 1918. 00:07:07.490 --> 00:07:09.870 A first -generation college student. And she 00:07:09.870 --> 00:07:11.889 didn't just attend. She immediately contributed 00:07:11.889 --> 00:07:14.310 to the intellectual life of the campus. She co 00:07:14.310 --> 00:07:16.569 -founded the Hilltop Student Newspaper and published 00:07:16.569 --> 00:07:19.149 her very first short stories. She earned an associate 00:07:19.149 --> 00:07:21.889 degree in 1920. And her career just began to 00:07:21.889 --> 00:07:24.199 accelerate. Her short story, John Redding Goes 00:07:24.199 --> 00:07:27.540 to Sea, published in 1921, was her first major 00:07:27.540 --> 00:07:30.060 literary achievement. And that qualified her 00:07:30.060 --> 00:07:32.199 for Elaine Locke's prestigious literary club, 00:07:32.319 --> 00:07:34.740 The Stylists. Which was her official entry into 00:07:34.740 --> 00:07:36.879 the intellectual circles of the burgeoning Harlem 00:07:36.879 --> 00:07:39.660 Renaissance. She had transitioned from the independent 00:07:39.660 --> 00:07:42.639 Black South to the epicenter of Black cultural 00:07:42.639 --> 00:07:45.230 production in the North. The real academic lead, 00:07:45.269 --> 00:07:48.769 however, came in 1925. She jumped from Howard 00:07:48.769 --> 00:07:51.370 to Barnard College, part of Columbia University, 00:07:51.730 --> 00:07:54.750 on a scholarship facilitated by Barnard trustee 00:07:54.750 --> 00:07:57.920 Annie Nathan -Meyer. Think about the stark contrast 00:07:57.920 --> 00:07:59.939 here. I mean, she was the sole black student 00:07:59.939 --> 00:08:02.319 at the women's college. She's leaving a nurturing, 00:08:02.379 --> 00:08:05.300 all -black educational environment for a segregated, 00:08:05.579 --> 00:08:08.680 overwhelmingly white, elite academic setting. 00:08:08.920 --> 00:08:11.120 And this transition is absolutely critical to 00:08:11.120 --> 00:08:13.620 understanding her intellectual formation. While 00:08:13.620 --> 00:08:15.639 she assisted Annie Nathan -Meyer in crashing 00:08:15.639 --> 00:08:18.540 a play, Black Souls, the academic core of her 00:08:18.540 --> 00:08:20.300 time, was spent training under the legendary 00:08:20.300 --> 00:08:23.899 Franz Boas at Columbia. Boas. He's often called 00:08:23.899 --> 00:08:26.360 the father of American anthropology. And his 00:08:26.360 --> 00:08:30.019 influence on Hurston was just enormous. It really 00:08:30.019 --> 00:08:32.419 was. Can you elaborate on the significance of 00:08:32.419 --> 00:08:35.100 Boas for a moment? What did he teach that was 00:08:35.100 --> 00:08:38.200 so foundational to her life's work? Well, Boas 00:08:38.200 --> 00:08:40.440 championed what's called cultural relativism. 00:08:40.600 --> 00:08:43.899 This was a radical concept in the 1920s, a time 00:08:43.899 --> 00:08:46.039 when hierarchical and evolutionary models of 00:08:46.039 --> 00:08:48.519 race models that ranked cultures from primitive 00:08:48.519 --> 00:08:51.240 to advanced were still common, even in science. 00:08:51.779 --> 00:08:54.240 Boas sought to overturn that framework entirely. 00:08:54.909 --> 00:08:56.909 He argued that every culture should be understood 00:08:56.909 --> 00:09:00.009 on its own terms, within its own context, without 00:09:00.009 --> 00:09:02.549 being judged against some arbitrary Western standard. 00:09:02.690 --> 00:09:06.149 It was a profoundly anti -racist, anti -supremacist 00:09:06.149 --> 00:09:08.750 framework. So for a black scholar studying under 00:09:08.750 --> 00:09:11.169 Boas, the message is clear. African -American 00:09:11.169 --> 00:09:13.809 culture was not a degradation of African culture 00:09:13.809 --> 00:09:16.350 or an inferior version of white culture. It was 00:09:16.350 --> 00:09:18.830 complete, valid, complex system unto itself. 00:09:19.009 --> 00:09:21.250 Right. And this directly shaped Hurston's lifelong 00:09:21.250 --> 00:09:23.590 goal. Right. To use the anthropological lens 00:09:23.590 --> 00:09:25.970 to show the deep complexity, wisdom, and simply 00:09:25.970 --> 00:09:28.330 validity of black vernacular culture, effectively 00:09:28.330 --> 00:09:31.029 overturning the notion of racial hierarchy through 00:09:31.029 --> 00:09:33.850 detailed, respectful observation. She studied 00:09:33.850 --> 00:09:35.850 not only with Bose, but also with his students, 00:09:35.970 --> 00:09:38.009 like Ruth Benedict and Margaret Mead, earning 00:09:38.009 --> 00:09:41.429 her B .A. in anthropology in 1928. Which solidifies 00:09:41.429 --> 00:09:43.750 her identity, not just as a writer who happened 00:09:43.750 --> 00:09:45.750 to use folklore, but as a professionally trained 00:09:45.750 --> 00:09:48.340 scientist of culture. Okay, so she has the Ivy 00:09:48.340 --> 00:09:51.259 League pedigree and the mentorship of Boas. But 00:09:51.259 --> 00:09:53.759 to execute the kind of immersive field work that 00:09:53.759 --> 00:09:56.440 Boas demanded, living among the people, speaking 00:09:56.440 --> 00:09:59.179 their language, she needed significant funding. 00:09:59.360 --> 00:10:02.000 She did. And this brings us to what I find to 00:10:02.000 --> 00:10:04.159 be one of the most fraught and difficult relationships 00:10:04.159 --> 00:10:07.720 of her early career, the patronage dynamic. You're 00:10:07.720 --> 00:10:10.059 talking about Mrs. Charlotte Osgood Mason. Yes, 00:10:10.139 --> 00:10:13.179 often referred to as Godmother by Hurston and 00:10:13.179 --> 00:10:16.210 Langston Hughes, whom Mason also supported. Mason 00:10:16.210 --> 00:10:18.990 was a wealthy white philanthropist, and in 1927, 00:10:19.110 --> 00:10:22.509 she began providing Hurston with a critical $200 00:10:22.509 --> 00:10:24.990 per month stipend for fieldwork. Which was a 00:10:24.990 --> 00:10:27.529 substantial sum for the time. A huge sum. And 00:10:27.529 --> 00:10:31.350 that support lasted until 1932. A $200 stipend 00:10:31.350 --> 00:10:33.350 sounds like a great deal, especially for a black 00:10:33.350 --> 00:10:35.509 woman pursuing field science in the Jim Crow 00:10:35.509 --> 00:10:38.029 South. But the critique suggests this support 00:10:38.029 --> 00:10:40.809 came with massive strings attached. It came with 00:10:40.809 --> 00:10:43.960 a heavy cost of intellectual control. Mason demanded 00:10:43.960 --> 00:10:47.220 all the material Hurston collected. Negro music, 00:10:47.460 --> 00:10:52.029 folklore, literature, hoodoo, everything. She 00:10:52.029 --> 00:10:54.289 insisted on complete ownership over Hurston's 00:10:54.289 --> 00:10:56.629 intellectual property and even restricted who 00:10:56.629 --> 00:10:58.870 she could share it with. Mason was interested 00:10:58.870 --> 00:11:01.669 in what she considered primitive or pure cultural 00:11:01.669 --> 00:11:03.929 expressions, often viewing the field material 00:11:03.929 --> 00:11:07.309 through her own romanticized or even paternalistic 00:11:07.309 --> 00:11:10.070 lens. So Hurston, for five crucial years, had 00:11:10.070 --> 00:11:12.649 to constantly balance satisfying Mason's financial 00:11:12.649 --> 00:11:15.309 expectations with meeting the rigorous academic 00:11:15.309 --> 00:11:18.129 demands of Boas. It was a tightrope walk between 00:11:18.129 --> 00:11:20.919 survival and intellectual integrity. She used 00:11:20.919 --> 00:11:23.620 that money to dive deep into what she knew best, 00:11:23.879 --> 00:11:26.240 the cultural landscape of the South. Between 00:11:26.240 --> 00:11:30.039 1928 and 1932, she traveled extensively, leading 00:11:30.039 --> 00:11:32.500 to her pioneering work, Mules and Men, published 00:11:32.500 --> 00:11:35.200 in 1935. And Mules and Men is rightly celebrated 00:11:35.200 --> 00:11:37.379 as a truly groundbreaking work of what we now 00:11:37.379 --> 00:11:40.000 call literary anthropology. It documents African 00:11:40.000 --> 00:11:42.240 -American folklore, sermons, games, and material 00:11:42.240 --> 00:11:44.759 from turpentine camps, sawmills, and timber camps, 00:11:44.840 --> 00:11:47.169 particularly in North Florida. And crucially, 00:11:47.210 --> 00:11:49.870 she didn't just record the stories. She inserted 00:11:49.870 --> 00:11:52.389 herself as a character. Exactly. An ethnographer 00:11:52.389 --> 00:11:54.429 in the text who is accepted by the community 00:11:54.429 --> 00:11:56.950 and participates in the storytelling and ritual 00:11:56.950 --> 00:12:01.210 life. This methodological choice was highly influential. 00:12:01.529 --> 00:12:03.610 And what makes this more than just a collection 00:12:03.610 --> 00:12:06.429 of quaint stories are the specific sociological 00:12:06.429 --> 00:12:08.950 observations she embedded right alongside the 00:12:08.950 --> 00:12:11.710 folklore. You mentioned the practice of paramour 00:12:11.710 --> 00:12:14.100 rites. This is where her anthropological training 00:12:14.100 --> 00:12:17.080 provided a sharp political edge. She didn't shy 00:12:17.080 --> 00:12:19.559 away from documenting the power dynamics of racialized 00:12:19.559 --> 00:12:22.139 patriarchy. So what was that exactly? She described 00:12:22.139 --> 00:12:24.299 the common, disturbing practice of white men 00:12:24.299 --> 00:12:27.580 in positions of power owners, bosses, local politicians, 00:12:27.940 --> 00:12:31.120 taking black women as concubines, often fathering 00:12:31.120 --> 00:12:33.379 children with them, and exercising dominance 00:12:33.379 --> 00:12:36.559 rooted in slavery -era practices. And she called 00:12:36.559 --> 00:12:39.779 the system paramour rights. She or others later 00:12:39.779 --> 00:12:42.379 referred to it explicitly as that. based on the 00:12:42.379 --> 00:12:45.299 white men's unchallenged societal authority within 00:12:45.299 --> 00:12:48.019 the segregated South. This shows that her work 00:12:48.019 --> 00:12:50.340 was never merely a celebration of Black culture. 00:12:50.460 --> 00:12:53.559 It was a deeply observant critique of the oppressive 00:12:53.559 --> 00:12:55.980 structures surrounding it. Here is where we encounter 00:12:55.980 --> 00:12:58.320 the figure who truly links her fieldwork to the 00:12:58.320 --> 00:13:01.940 history of slavery. Cajoe Cazola Lewis or Cazola? 00:13:02.139 --> 00:13:04.460 Right. He was the last known survivor of the 00:13:04.460 --> 00:13:07.000 illegal transatlantic slave trade, trafficked 00:13:07.000 --> 00:13:10.019 aboard the Clotilda in 1860, and Hurston traveled 00:13:10.019 --> 00:13:12.720 to Plateau, Alabama, to interview him extensively. 00:13:12.940 --> 00:13:15.179 Her first published account based on his life 00:13:15.179 --> 00:13:18.480 came out in 1928 titled Kajo's Own Story of the 00:13:18.480 --> 00:13:21.710 Last African Slaver. This interaction is foundational, 00:13:22.009 --> 00:13:23.970 but it is also where the academic controversy 00:13:23.970 --> 00:13:26.350 first emerged regarding her methodology. Yes, 00:13:26.370 --> 00:13:27.850 and this is where we need to dive into that specific 00:13:27.850 --> 00:13:29.990 detail. The sources suggest that this initial 00:13:29.990 --> 00:13:33.309 1928 article contained plagiarism. That's a massive 00:13:33.309 --> 00:13:35.990 academic failing, especially for a student mentored 00:13:35.990 --> 00:13:39.149 by Boas. What exactly happened? Well, the initial 00:13:39.149 --> 00:13:41.490 discovery, later detailed by her biographer, 00:13:41.649 --> 00:13:44.470 Robert E. Hemenway, was that the 1928 article 00:13:44.470 --> 00:13:47.049 was largely lifted, sometimes word for word, 00:13:47.190 --> 00:13:50.259 from a 1914 book written by M. Emma Langdon Roche, 00:13:50.399 --> 00:13:52.779 who had also interviewed Lewis. So it wasn't 00:13:52.779 --> 00:13:55.399 just a similar idea. It was actual text. It was 00:13:55.399 --> 00:13:58.179 actual text. Now, Hurston did add new original 00:13:58.179 --> 00:14:00.820 information about Lewis's home village of Bante, 00:14:00.940 --> 00:14:03.539 but the core narrative structure and some phrasing 00:14:03.539 --> 00:14:06.019 were copied. Humanway later claimed that she 00:14:06.019 --> 00:14:09.039 never plagiarized again, suggesting it was an 00:14:09.039 --> 00:14:11.539 early, perhaps desperate mistake made under the 00:14:11.539 --> 00:14:13.759 pressure of needing to produce content for her 00:14:13.759 --> 00:14:16.990 patron, Mason. But plagiarism is a huge ethical 00:14:16.990 --> 00:14:19.629 red flag. How did a figure so committed to the 00:14:19.629 --> 00:14:22.190 truth of black life compromise her academic integrity 00:14:22.190 --> 00:14:24.769 at this critical juncture? That tension is the 00:14:24.769 --> 00:14:28.019 central paradox of her early career. The patronage 00:14:28.019 --> 00:14:30.440 dynamic created an environment of haste and pressure. 00:14:30.620 --> 00:14:32.559 She was often traveling with little support, 00:14:32.820 --> 00:14:35.240 needing to constantly produce material that satisfied 00:14:35.240 --> 00:14:37.899 Mason's aesthetic tastes and Boas' scientific 00:14:37.899 --> 00:14:40.620 requirements. It's possible she saw the earlier 00:14:40.620 --> 00:14:43.320 text as simply existing folklore that she was 00:14:43.320 --> 00:14:45.779 refining, or maybe she just cut corners. It's 00:14:45.779 --> 00:14:47.940 a significant mark against her academic record, 00:14:48.039 --> 00:14:50.519 though. No question. It established a pattern 00:14:50.519 --> 00:14:53.480 of ethical flexibility in the pursuit of a compelling 00:14:53.480 --> 00:14:55.840 narrative, a pattern that would surface again. 00:14:56.480 --> 00:14:58.960 Despite that misstep, she returned to Lewis, 00:14:59.159 --> 00:15:01.120 conducting more interviews, taking photographs, 00:15:01.399 --> 00:15:03.720 and recording the only known film footage of 00:15:03.720 --> 00:15:06.879 him. This material became the basis for Barracoon, 00:15:07.019 --> 00:15:10.100 the story of the last black cargo. A book she 00:15:10.100 --> 00:15:13.860 completed in 1931, but shockingly, wasn't published 00:15:13.860 --> 00:15:17.769 until 2018. 2018. Why the delay? Publishers in 00:15:17.769 --> 00:15:20.870 the 1930s rejected it, primarily because Hurston 00:15:20.870 --> 00:15:24.230 refused to modernize Lewis's dialect. She insisted 00:15:24.230 --> 00:15:26.750 on transcribing his language exactly as he spoke 00:15:26.750 --> 00:15:29.009 it, a method that publishers worried would be 00:15:29.009 --> 00:15:31.029 inaccessible or off -putting to a mainstream 00:15:31.029 --> 00:15:33.190 audience. And the title Barracoon, what does 00:15:33.190 --> 00:15:35.629 that mean? It refers to the temporary barracks, 00:15:35.649 --> 00:15:38.129 where captured Africans were imprisoned before 00:15:38.129 --> 00:15:40.919 being shipped overseas. The narrative she created 00:15:40.919 --> 00:15:43.080 was highly dramatic and emotionally resonant, 00:15:43.080 --> 00:15:45.860 a semi -fictionalized account that allowed Lewis's 00:15:45.860 --> 00:15:48.669 voice to be heard directly, uncensored. That 00:15:48.669 --> 00:15:51.730 blending of hard fact and storytelling, where 00:15:51.730 --> 00:15:54.990 she prioritizes the emotional or narrative truth 00:15:54.990 --> 00:15:58.590 over strict quantitative objectivity, that seems 00:15:58.590 --> 00:16:00.470 to be the hallmark of her methodology, right? 00:16:00.590 --> 00:16:02.409 Absolutely. And that approach continued when 00:16:02.409 --> 00:16:05.309 she went international. In 1937, she received 00:16:05.309 --> 00:16:08.029 a prestigious Guggenheim Fellowship, which allowed 00:16:08.029 --> 00:16:10.710 her to escape the Mason patronage dynamic and 00:16:10.710 --> 00:16:13.029 conduct independent ethnographic research in 00:16:13.029 --> 00:16:16.000 Jamaica and Haiti. And this resulted in Tell 00:16:16.000 --> 00:16:18.600 My Horse, Voodoo and Life in Haiti and Jamaica, 00:16:18.759 --> 00:16:21.659 published in 1938. A truly genre -defying book. 00:16:21.799 --> 00:16:24.259 It mixes rigorous anthropology with folklore 00:16:24.259 --> 00:16:27.019 and deeply personal narrative. Can you give us 00:16:27.019 --> 00:16:29.600 a specific example of her fieldwork method in 00:16:29.600 --> 00:16:32.000 that context? Sure. Look at her description of 00:16:32.000 --> 00:16:34.019 the nine -night ritual in St. Thomas, Jamaica, 00:16:34.279 --> 00:16:36.059 which is a traditional period of mourning and 00:16:36.059 --> 00:16:38.159 celebration after a death. Instead of delivering 00:16:38.159 --> 00:16:41.360 a dry, technical, or quantitative analysis of 00:16:41.360 --> 00:16:44.279 the social structure of the ritual, She participates. 00:16:44.379 --> 00:16:47.220 She aims to capture the atmosphere, the spiritual 00:16:47.220 --> 00:16:49.720 fervor, and the dynamic social interactions. 00:16:50.379 --> 00:16:53.220 She describes the singing, the dancing, the atmosphere 00:16:53.220 --> 00:16:55.559 of dread and excitement regarding the dhupi, 00:16:55.580 --> 00:16:58.159 or spirit, lingering around the body. So she's 00:16:58.159 --> 00:17:01.039 documenting the experience of belief, not just 00:17:01.039 --> 00:17:04.000 the data points of the ritual. Precisely. And 00:17:04.000 --> 00:17:05.720 I can see how that makes for powerful reading, 00:17:05.859 --> 00:17:08.319 but I can also imagine why it would make traditional 00:17:08.319 --> 00:17:11.140 academics nervous. It seems like it would. It 00:17:11.140 --> 00:17:14.029 did. That vibrancy drew significant criticism. 00:17:14.289 --> 00:17:16.869 Her representation of voodoo in Tell My Horse, 00:17:17.009 --> 00:17:19.269 with its focus on zombies and dramatic rituals, 00:17:19.470 --> 00:17:22.509 was seen by some as sensationalist, playing into 00:17:22.509 --> 00:17:25.190 existing exotic stereotypes rather than conducting 00:17:25.190 --> 00:17:27.490 sober science. And the critique went deeper, 00:17:27.569 --> 00:17:29.910 didn't it, regarding her earlier work? It did. 00:17:30.069 --> 00:17:32.130 We know from a later letter she wrote to Ruth 00:17:32.130 --> 00:17:34.390 Benedict that she admitted to fabricating material 00:17:34.390 --> 00:17:37.009 and dialogue for mules and men. Wait, she admitted 00:17:37.009 --> 00:17:40.450 to fabrication? That undermines the entire premise 00:17:40.450 --> 00:17:44.009 of objective ethnography. It does. She specifically 00:17:44.009 --> 00:17:46.549 mentioned inventing the story of rival voodoo 00:17:46.549 --> 00:17:49.349 doctors as a child in her later autobiography, 00:17:49.509 --> 00:17:52.529 Dust Tracks on a Road, to satisfy the expectations 00:17:52.529 --> 00:17:56.890 of her audience or patrons, likely Mason. Critics 00:17:56.890 --> 00:17:58.650 have argued that while her qualitative method 00:17:58.650 --> 00:18:01.690 was revolutionary, the blurring of lines between 00:18:01.690 --> 00:18:04.710 authentic documentation and narrative flair that 00:18:04.710 --> 00:18:07.490 need to tell a better story made her methodology 00:18:07.490 --> 00:18:11.230 highly questionable to academic colleagues. The 00:18:11.230 --> 00:18:13.390 constant friction between the novelist and the 00:18:13.390 --> 00:18:16.230 scientist in her head. That's it exactly. But 00:18:16.230 --> 00:18:18.089 despite the controversies, her commitment to 00:18:18.089 --> 00:18:20.450 documenting Black culture continued unabated 00:18:20.450 --> 00:18:22.490 during the Depression era, even leading her to 00:18:22.490 --> 00:18:24.250 federal employment. Right. She worked for the 00:18:24.250 --> 00:18:27.329 Federal Writers Project, the FWP, from 1938 to 00:18:27.329 --> 00:18:30.170 1939. Yes, part of the Works Progress Administration. 00:18:30.730 --> 00:18:33.269 She was gathering information for Florida's historical 00:18:33.269 --> 00:18:36.009 and cultural collection, leveraging her fieldwork 00:18:36.009 --> 00:18:38.230 skills for a public history project. And this 00:18:38.230 --> 00:18:40.910 is where her ethnomusicology, her study of music 00:18:40.910 --> 00:18:43.230 in its cultural context, truly shines through. 00:18:43.349 --> 00:18:45.970 The materials she collected for the FWP included 00:18:45.970 --> 00:18:48.390 incredible audio documents of Black vernacular 00:18:48.390 --> 00:18:52.109 music and performance. She preserved pieces like 00:18:52.109 --> 00:18:54.450 the Crow Dance, which is a Bahamian American 00:18:54.450 --> 00:18:57.490 dance song with deep West African roots. She 00:18:57.490 --> 00:18:59.890 recorded the Gullah Geechee song, Oh, the Beaufort 00:18:59.890 --> 00:19:02.369 Boat Done Come, documenting the culture of the 00:19:02.369 --> 00:19:04.809 Sea Islands. And she captured Gabriel Brown's 00:19:04.809 --> 00:19:07.210 performance of the legendary folk song John Henry. 00:19:07.369 --> 00:19:10.250 Yeah. It shows a deep, multifaceted commitment 00:19:10.250 --> 00:19:12.970 to preserving the total cultural tradition, the 00:19:12.970 --> 00:19:15.970 language, the story, and the song, all of which 00:19:15.970 --> 00:19:19.470 she saw as integral to Black identity. It's truly 00:19:19.470 --> 00:19:21.710 amazing that she found the time and the mental 00:19:21.710 --> 00:19:24.049 space to write novels while simultaneously navigating 00:19:24.049 --> 00:19:26.869 dangerous field conditions and dealing with demanding 00:19:26.869 --> 00:19:30.250 patrons. Let's pivot fully now to the literary 00:19:30.250 --> 00:19:32.670 explosion that happened concurrently with her 00:19:32.670 --> 00:19:34.789 fieldwork. When Hurston arrived in New York City 00:19:34.789 --> 00:19:37.150 in 1925, the Harlem Renaissance was absolutely 00:19:37.150 --> 00:19:39.809 at its cultural zenith. And she didn't just attend 00:19:39.809 --> 00:19:42.430 the Renaissance. She became one of its central, 00:19:42.549 --> 00:19:45.910 most firebrand figures. She published her short 00:19:45.910 --> 00:19:49.259 story, Spunk, in The New Negro. Elaine Locke's 00:19:49.259 --> 00:19:52.059 landmark anthology, immediately establishing 00:19:52.059 --> 00:19:54.700 her voice. And she was quickly involved with 00:19:54.700 --> 00:19:57.579 what they playfully, perhaps provocatively, called 00:19:57.579 --> 00:20:00.720 the Niggerati group. A group that included fellow 00:20:00.720 --> 00:20:03.519 literary giants like Langston Hughes and Wallace 00:20:03.519 --> 00:20:06.480 Thurman. What was their focus? This cohort was 00:20:06.480 --> 00:20:09.299 focused on rejecting the traditional, often sentimental 00:20:09.299 --> 00:20:12.119 portrayal of black life that was popular among 00:20:12.119 --> 00:20:14.339 older black intellectuals and white patrons. 00:20:14.579 --> 00:20:17.920 They wanted something raw, complex, and sometimes 00:20:17.920 --> 00:20:20.559 deliberately shocking. And this ambition resulted 00:20:20.559 --> 00:20:22.680 in the short -lived but incredibly influential 00:20:22.680 --> 00:20:26.579 literary magazine called Fire in 1926. One issue. 00:20:26.700 --> 00:20:28.839 It only lasted one issue because it was so controversial 00:20:28.839 --> 00:20:31.400 and financially disastrous, but it crystallized 00:20:31.400 --> 00:20:33.759 a generational split in the Harlem literary scene. 00:20:34.039 --> 00:20:36.819 And that desire for uncompromising creative control 00:20:36.819 --> 00:20:39.180 led to one of the great collaborations and subsequent 00:20:39.180 --> 00:20:41.839 falling outs of the movement. The dramatic dispute 00:20:41.839 --> 00:20:44.099 with Langston Hughes over the play Mule Bone, 00:20:44.299 --> 00:20:47.440 a comedy of Negro life. Right. They wrote it 00:20:47.440 --> 00:20:50.759 together in 1930. The premise was based on the 00:20:50.759 --> 00:20:53.059 folklore she had collected, capturing the specific 00:20:53.059 --> 00:20:55.259 idiom and humor of the Southern Black community. 00:20:55.839 --> 00:20:58.279 But a dispute over ownership and performance 00:20:58.279 --> 00:21:01.140 rights. Partially fueled by the interference 00:21:01.140 --> 00:21:04.279 of their patron, Charlotte Osgood Mason, who 00:21:04.279 --> 00:21:06.900 often stoked competition, destroyed their friendship 00:21:06.900 --> 00:21:09.319 permanently. And the play was shelled for decades. 00:21:09.740 --> 00:21:12.240 It was so bitter that the play itself was never 00:21:12.240 --> 00:21:14.759 staged in its own time. It only premiered in 00:21:14.759 --> 00:21:18.859 1991. Wow. That collapse over the play, which 00:21:18.859 --> 00:21:21.619 was essentially a fight over whose vision of 00:21:21.619 --> 00:21:24.240 black vernacular culture would prevail, really 00:21:24.240 --> 00:21:26.920 underscores that fierce individualism that defined 00:21:26.920 --> 00:21:29.720 Hurston. Absolutely. She was unwilling to compromise 00:21:29.720 --> 00:21:32.200 her artistic interpretation, even if it cost 00:21:32.200 --> 00:21:33.839 her one of the most important friendships and 00:21:33.839 --> 00:21:36.019 professional collaborations of her career. Her 00:21:36.019 --> 00:21:38.180 individual literary career flourished nonetheless 00:21:38.180 --> 00:21:41.220 throughout her fieldwork years. Her first novel, 00:21:41.299 --> 00:21:44.400 Jonah's Gordvine, was published in 1934. Drawing 00:21:44.400 --> 00:21:46.420 heavily on her family history and the culture 00:21:46.420 --> 00:21:48.660 of Black Southern preachers. Then came their 00:21:48.660 --> 00:21:52.400 eyes were watching God in 1937, her masterwork. 00:21:52.599 --> 00:21:55.000 Which she famously wrote in just seven weeks 00:21:55.000 --> 00:21:57.500 while conducting ethnographic research in Haiti. 00:21:57.849 --> 00:22:00.369 Under the Guggenheim. Just incredible. Our third 00:22:00.369 --> 00:22:03.109 novel, a retelling of the Exodus story, Moses, 00:22:03.309 --> 00:22:06.609 Man of the Mountain, followed in 1939. And then 00:22:06.609 --> 00:22:08.589 there's the final published novel, Seraph on 00:22:08.589 --> 00:22:11.130 the Suwannee from 1948. A radical departure. 00:22:11.470 --> 00:22:13.829 In what way? It centers principally on white 00:22:13.829 --> 00:22:16.589 characters and explores the identities of so 00:22:16.589 --> 00:22:19.589 -called white trash women in Florida. Which is 00:22:19.589 --> 00:22:21.750 a very different focus for her. It's a complex 00:22:21.750 --> 00:22:24.640 and often overlooked novel. Some scholars suggest 00:22:24.640 --> 00:22:28.019 that this meditation on objection, poverty, and 00:22:28.019 --> 00:22:29.880 the construction of class and gender identities 00:22:29.880 --> 00:22:33.339 among poor whites. It actually reflects a complicated 00:22:33.339 --> 00:22:35.559 engagement with the eugenics discourses of the 00:22:35.559 --> 00:22:39.119 1920s and 30s. Eugenics, that was a highly problematic 00:22:39.119 --> 00:22:42.359 pseudoscientific movement. How does her novel 00:22:42.359 --> 00:22:45.049 engage with that? Well, it doesn't endorse it, 00:22:45.170 --> 00:22:47.890 but it certainly investigates the social construction 00:22:47.890 --> 00:22:51.670 of supposed inherent worth or lack thereof, even 00:22:51.670 --> 00:22:54.349 among different groups of white Americans. By 00:22:54.349 --> 00:22:56.529 shifting her focus away from the politics of 00:22:56.529 --> 00:22:59.230 race and onto the politics of class and character 00:22:59.230 --> 00:23:02.250 among poor whites, she was perhaps trying to 00:23:02.250 --> 00:23:04.509 universalize the struggle for self -determination 00:23:04.509 --> 00:23:07.150 that was central to her own life, regardless 00:23:07.150 --> 00:23:09.690 of skin color. Concurrent with her novel writing, 00:23:09.890 --> 00:23:12.210 she was deeply committed to developing black 00:23:12.210 --> 00:23:14.509 dramatic expression. She didn't just want to 00:23:14.509 --> 00:23:16.809 collect folklore. She wanted to perform it. Right. 00:23:16.970 --> 00:23:19.910 In 1934, she established a school of dramatic 00:23:19.910 --> 00:23:23.529 arts at Bethune -Cookman College, an HBCU in 00:23:23.529 --> 00:23:26.529 Daytona Beach. Her goal was to create theater 00:23:26.529 --> 00:23:29.660 based on pure Negro expression. drawing directly 00:23:29.660 --> 00:23:32.640 from the songs, dances, and rituals she documented. 00:23:32.880 --> 00:23:35.160 And her theatrical reviews, like The Great Day, 00:23:35.339 --> 00:23:37.779 reflected this belief that folklore should not 00:23:37.779 --> 00:23:40.579 remain passive on the page. It should be dramatized 00:23:40.579 --> 00:23:42.480 and brought to life by the community it came 00:23:42.480 --> 00:23:44.980 from, but that passion for performance cost her. 00:23:45.180 --> 00:23:48.019 Financially, I mean. Oh, yeah. The Great Day 00:23:48.019 --> 00:23:50.579 only had one performance and left Hurston in 00:23:50.579 --> 00:23:53.579 $600 worth of debt, a huge amount back then. 00:23:53.869 --> 00:23:56.210 It shows the sheer financial volatility of her 00:23:56.210 --> 00:23:59.109 career. She was constantly reinvesting any money 00:23:59.109 --> 00:24:01.549 she earned back into her art and her research. 00:24:01.769 --> 00:24:04.390 Her academic residencies also reflect this constant 00:24:04.390 --> 00:24:07.230 tension between her brilliant mind and her unconventional 00:24:07.230 --> 00:24:10.250 persona. Yes. She took a position in the drama 00:24:10.250 --> 00:24:12.549 department at the North Carolina College for 00:24:12.549 --> 00:24:17.250 Negroes NCC for the 1939 -1940 academic year. 00:24:17.549 --> 00:24:20.150 But while she was teaching there, she was simultaneously 00:24:20.150 --> 00:24:23.089 engaged in a remarkable academic maneuver. She 00:24:23.089 --> 00:24:25.130 was secretly studying at the segregated University 00:24:25.130 --> 00:24:28.190 of North Carolina at Chapel Hill UNC. A secret 00:24:28.190 --> 00:24:30.430 student at the highly segregated white institution. 00:24:30.809 --> 00:24:32.890 She was participating in coursework in theater 00:24:32.890 --> 00:24:35.589 groups and being mentored by faculty like the 00:24:35.589 --> 00:24:37.470 Pulitzer Prize winning playwright Paul Green. 00:24:37.670 --> 00:24:40.109 That's just audacious. She's simultaneously working 00:24:40.109 --> 00:24:42.630 at a black college and taking classes at a segregated 00:24:42.630 --> 00:24:44.849 white college. How did that even work? It was 00:24:44.849 --> 00:24:47.029 an open secret among the faculty who respected 00:24:47.029 --> 00:24:49.289 her brilliance, if not publicly acknowledged 00:24:49.289 --> 00:24:52.130 by the administration. However, her tenure at 00:24:52.130 --> 00:24:55.730 NCC ended abruptly after only one year. Why? 00:24:56.150 --> 00:24:59.349 Well, the sources point clearly to a difficult 00:24:59.349 --> 00:25:01.730 departure stemming from her relationship with 00:25:01.730 --> 00:25:04.589 NCC's president, James E. Shepard. And the conflict 00:25:04.589 --> 00:25:06.730 was personal, wasn't it? Not just intellectual. 00:25:07.109 --> 00:25:09.769 Profoundly personal. Shepard reportedly found 00:25:09.769 --> 00:25:12.920 Hurston's attire. She was known for her flamboyant, 00:25:12.920 --> 00:25:15.759 slightly bohemian style and her overall lifestyle 00:25:15.759 --> 00:25:18.160 inappropriate for an unmarried woman on campus. 00:25:18.420 --> 00:25:21.680 She was fiercely independent, unmarried, traveling 00:25:21.680 --> 00:25:24.200 extensively and unwilling to conform to the strict 00:25:24.200 --> 00:25:27.119 behavioral codes expected of a female academic 00:25:27.119 --> 00:25:30.019 at an HBCU at the time. Her independent spirit, 00:25:30.200 --> 00:25:33.220 while fueling her creativity, fundamentally clashed 00:25:33.220 --> 00:25:35.559 with institutional expectations of respectability. 00:25:35.839 --> 00:25:38.890 She simply refused to be contained. That refusal 00:25:38.890 --> 00:25:40.670 to be contained by conventional expectations 00:25:40.670 --> 00:25:43.049 brings us sharply into the later phase of her 00:25:43.049 --> 00:25:45.730 career, where her contrarian political edge became 00:25:45.730 --> 00:25:48.210 so pronounced that it contributed significantly 00:25:48.210 --> 00:25:50.809 to her professional obscurity. Yes, and let's 00:25:50.809 --> 00:25:53.109 start with a major late career assignment that 00:25:53.109 --> 00:25:55.109 allowed her to use her anthropological background 00:25:55.109 --> 00:25:58.750 for journalism. The sensational Ruby McCollum 00:25:58.750 --> 00:26:03.539 murder trial of 1952 -1953. Right. She was hired 00:26:03.539 --> 00:26:06.140 by the prominent black newspaper, the Pittsburgh 00:26:06.140 --> 00:26:09.299 Courier, to cover this highly publicized case. 00:26:09.740 --> 00:26:12.440 Ruby McCollum, a wealthy black woman, was accused 00:26:12.440 --> 00:26:15.740 of killing C. Leroy Adams, a white doctor, state 00:26:15.740 --> 00:26:18.839 politician, and alleged lover. And Hurston immediately 00:26:18.839 --> 00:26:21.180 approached this not just as a crime story, but 00:26:21.180 --> 00:26:23.779 through her own academic lens. She saw the case 00:26:23.779 --> 00:26:25.839 potentially revolving entirely around the system 00:26:25.839 --> 00:26:28.660 of paramour rights. That same white male sexual 00:26:28.660 --> 00:26:31.119 dominance she had documented decades earlier 00:26:31.119 --> 00:26:34.390 in the North Florida lumber camps. Exactly. She 00:26:34.390 --> 00:26:36.190 and the editor believed the trial was a prime 00:26:36.190 --> 00:26:39.509 opportunity to expose this toxic, systemic practice 00:26:39.509 --> 00:26:42.869 to a national audience. But upon arrival, she 00:26:42.869 --> 00:26:45.109 faced immediate journalistic hurdles. The judge 00:26:45.109 --> 00:26:47.970 issued a strict gag order. A gag order, and there 00:26:47.970 --> 00:26:49.829 was a profound silence from both black and white 00:26:49.829 --> 00:26:52.470 residents. This silence was likely enforced by 00:26:52.470 --> 00:26:55.130 fear, possibly related to Dr. Adams' alleged 00:26:55.130 --> 00:26:57.470 involvement in Ruby's husband's illegal gambling 00:26:57.470 --> 00:27:00.069 operation. A dangerous undercurrent to the whole 00:27:00.069 --> 00:27:02.529 affair. Very. Despite the obstacles, Hurston 00:27:02.529 --> 00:27:04.789 achieved something monumentally important in 00:27:04.789 --> 00:27:07.450 that coverage. She focused intensely on Ruby 00:27:07.450 --> 00:27:10.250 McCollum's testimony in her own defense. And 00:27:10.250 --> 00:27:12.970 this is the achievement. McCollum's testimony 00:27:12.970 --> 00:27:15.190 marked the first time an African -American woman 00:27:15.190 --> 00:27:17.829 was allowed to testify as to the paternity of 00:27:17.829 --> 00:27:20.710 her child by a white man in a segregated Southern 00:27:20.710 --> 00:27:23.769 court. A crack in the Jim Crow wall. It was. 00:27:24.240 --> 00:27:27.279 Hurston celebrated this victory, declaring in 00:27:27.279 --> 00:27:29.900 print that McCollum's testimony had sounded the 00:27:29.900 --> 00:27:33.019 death toll of paramour rights in the segregated 00:27:33.019 --> 00:27:35.299 South. But once again, her professional ethics 00:27:35.299 --> 00:27:37.680 became murky. She shared her deep foundational 00:27:37.680 --> 00:27:40.339 material from the first trial with a white journalist, 00:27:40.640 --> 00:27:43.720 William Bradford Huey, who then wrote the bestseller 00:27:43.720 --> 00:27:46.819 Ruby McCollum, Woman in the Sewanee Jail in 1956. 00:27:47.680 --> 00:27:50.680 And Huey, despite using her essential fieldwork 00:27:50.680 --> 00:27:53.480 and insights, only gave Hurston a brief passing 00:27:53.480 --> 00:27:55.579 acknowledgement. Which again points to her difficulty 00:27:55.579 --> 00:27:57.480 navigating the practical world of professional 00:27:57.480 --> 00:28:01.460 advancement. Right. She was perhaps too trusting 00:28:01.460 --> 00:28:03.660 or too focused on the larger goal of getting 00:28:03.660 --> 00:28:06.220 the story out, regardless of who published the 00:28:06.220 --> 00:28:08.619 definitive account. Regardless of the journalistic 00:28:08.619 --> 00:28:11.160 setbacks, the truly defining characteristic of 00:28:11.160 --> 00:28:14.039 her later life was her profound and unwavering 00:28:14.039 --> 00:28:17.069 political individualism. Hurston was a Republican. 00:28:17.349 --> 00:28:19.789 Yes, aligning herself with the politics of the 00:28:19.789 --> 00:28:21.529 old right. We need to unpack what that means. 00:28:22.029 --> 00:28:25.029 The old right of the mid -20th century was largely 00:28:25.029 --> 00:28:28.589 isolationist, fiscally conservative, and fiercely 00:28:28.589 --> 00:28:30.569 opposed to the expansion of federal governmental 00:28:30.569 --> 00:28:33.269 power. She was a spiritual heir to the philosophy 00:28:33.269 --> 00:28:35.730 of Booker T. Washington. The emphasis on self 00:28:35.730 --> 00:28:38.289 -reliance, economic independence, and working 00:28:38.289 --> 00:28:40.369 within established structures to build community 00:28:40.369 --> 00:28:43.190 strength, rather than prioritizing federal intervention 00:28:43.190 --> 00:28:46.430 or social upheaval. She famously separated herself 00:28:46.430 --> 00:28:48.970 from the collective civil rights activism of 00:28:48.970 --> 00:28:51.670 the rising generation. She stated, I am not interested 00:28:51.670 --> 00:28:53.750 in the race problem, but I am interested in the 00:28:53.750 --> 00:28:55.690 problems of individuals, white ones and black 00:28:55.690 --> 00:28:57.890 ones. It's a radical individualist position. 00:28:58.269 --> 00:29:01.130 She criticized race pride and race consciousness, 00:29:01.430 --> 00:29:04.430 arguing it was a thing to be abhorred. What was 00:29:04.430 --> 00:29:06.750 her reasoning there? Her reasoning was fascinating. 00:29:07.150 --> 00:29:09.869 She believed that basing one's pride on something 00:29:09.869 --> 00:29:13.539 as arbitrary as race was illogical. Why assume 00:29:13.539 --> 00:29:15.619 every black person is automatically a genius 00:29:15.619 --> 00:29:18.319 like Carver or every white person is a genius 00:29:18.319 --> 00:29:21.880 like Edison? Achievement, she argued, belongs 00:29:21.880 --> 00:29:24.980 purely to the individual. And these contrarian 00:29:24.980 --> 00:29:28.140 views extended to her economic philosophy, placing 00:29:28.140 --> 00:29:30.640 her firmly against the liberal consensus that 00:29:30.640 --> 00:29:34.180 was forming around Roosevelt's New Deal. In 1951, 00:29:34.220 --> 00:29:36.880 she harshly criticized the New Deal, arguing 00:29:36.880 --> 00:29:39.750 it had inadvertently created a harmful dependency 00:29:39.750 --> 00:29:42.369 among African -Americans on the government, ceding 00:29:42.369 --> 00:29:44.589 too much power and self -determination to distant 00:29:44.589 --> 00:29:47.589 politicians. This fear of centralized paternalistic 00:29:47.589 --> 00:29:50.450 government control was paramount for her. Absolutely. 00:29:50.690 --> 00:29:53.049 She supported the conservative Republican Senator 00:29:53.049 --> 00:29:56.650 Robert A. Taft's 1952 presidential campaign and 00:29:56.650 --> 00:29:58.789 consistently opposed interventionist foreign 00:29:58.789 --> 00:30:01.569 policy. She even called Harry Truman the butcher 00:30:01.569 --> 00:30:03.950 of Asia after the dropping of the atomic bombs 00:30:03.950 --> 00:30:07.069 on Japan. Given this staunch individualism and 00:30:07.069 --> 00:30:09.410 anti -political stance, it's not surprising that 00:30:09.410 --> 00:30:11.650 she drew the ire of her more politically motivated 00:30:11.650 --> 00:30:15.089 literary peers. Yes. This is where we return 00:30:15.089 --> 00:30:17.349 to Richard Wright, who essentially delivered 00:30:17.349 --> 00:30:20.029 a devastating career blow. His famous critique 00:30:20.029 --> 00:30:23.970 of their eyes were watching God. Right. He argued 00:30:23.970 --> 00:30:26.750 that the novel exploits that phase of Negro life 00:30:26.750 --> 00:30:29.609 which is quaint and satisfies the chauvinistic 00:30:29.609 --> 00:30:32.970 tastes of a white audience. He dismissed it as 00:30:32.970 --> 00:30:35.750 lacking theme. No message, no thought. Which 00:30:35.750 --> 00:30:37.950 was more than a literary disagreement. It was 00:30:37.950 --> 00:30:41.029 a political indictment. It was. Wright, who wrote 00:30:41.029 --> 00:30:43.150 explicitly about the brutal realities of racial 00:30:43.150 --> 00:30:45.589 oppression, believed literature had to serve 00:30:45.589 --> 00:30:48.450 the political struggle of the race. He saw Hurston's 00:30:48.450 --> 00:30:51.170 focus on folklore, dialect, and the internal 00:30:51.170 --> 00:30:53.730 dynamics of a segregated community as an evasion. 00:30:53.869 --> 00:30:56.369 A failure to advance the political cause. And 00:30:56.369 --> 00:30:58.309 this critique had weight because it captured 00:30:58.309 --> 00:31:01.049 the changing literary mood. In the late 30s and 00:31:01.049 --> 00:31:04.140 40s, the mood shifted toward realism. urban grit 00:31:04.140 --> 00:31:06.880 and political protest, embodied by Wright and 00:31:06.880 --> 00:31:09.500 later Ralph Ellison. Hurston's celebration of 00:31:09.500 --> 00:31:11.740 the vernacular just seemed outdated and apolitical 00:31:11.740 --> 00:31:14.660 by comparison. But perhaps the most jarring political 00:31:14.660 --> 00:31:17.200 stance she took, viewed through the modern historical 00:31:17.200 --> 00:31:21.279 lens, was her opposition to the 1954 Brown v. 00:31:21.440 --> 00:31:24.420 Board of Education Supreme Court ruling. This 00:31:24.420 --> 00:31:27.059 stance baffles many modern readers, but it must 00:31:27.059 --> 00:31:29.079 be understood within her framework of radical 00:31:29.079 --> 00:31:32.920 individualism and anti -centralism. In her 1955 00:31:32.920 --> 00:31:36.079 piece in the Orlando Sentinel, Court Order Can't 00:31:36.079 --> 00:31:38.579 Make the Races Mix, she argued that if separate 00:31:38.579 --> 00:31:40.799 schools were truly equal, which she contended 00:31:40.799 --> 00:31:43.799 they were rapidly becoming mandated, mixing wouldn't 00:31:43.799 --> 00:31:46.339 improve education. So what was the deeper philosophical 00:31:46.339 --> 00:31:49.400 motivation for opposing a ruling designed to 00:31:49.400 --> 00:31:52.559 end segregation? Her fear was twofold. First, 00:31:52.720 --> 00:31:54.980 she feared the demise of established black schools 00:31:54.980 --> 00:31:57.099 and the subsequent displacement of black teachers 00:31:57.099 --> 00:31:59.539 and administrators who were essential custodians 00:31:59.539 --> 00:32:02.380 of cultural tradition. Okay. Second, and critically, 00:32:02.559 --> 00:32:04.660 she viewed the ruling as establishing a dangerous 00:32:04.660 --> 00:32:06.680 legal precedent for an all -powerful federal 00:32:06.680 --> 00:32:09.140 government to undermine individual liberty on 00:32:09.140 --> 00:32:11.940 a broad range of future issues. To her, mandated 00:32:11.940 --> 00:32:14.119 mixing was just as tyrannical as mandated separation 00:32:14.119 --> 00:32:16.880 if it came from a centralized, coercive power 00:32:16.880 --> 00:32:19.559 source. So her position wasn't one of supporting 00:32:19.559 --> 00:32:22.099 segregation, which she had always opposed. No, 00:32:22.099 --> 00:32:24.440 not at all. It was a deeply skeptical view of 00:32:24.440 --> 00:32:27.880 centralized power forcing societal change upon 00:32:27.880 --> 00:32:30.700 the individual. This is why scholars today categorize 00:32:30.700 --> 00:32:33.059 her political identity using terms like conservative 00:32:33.059 --> 00:32:37.180 and libertarian. Exactly. John McWhorter characterized 00:32:37.180 --> 00:32:40.039 her as America's favorite black conservative. 00:32:41.049 --> 00:32:43.230 Others have compared her radical individualism 00:32:43.230 --> 00:32:46.410 to figures like Rose Wilder Lane and Isabel Patterson, 00:32:46.470 --> 00:32:49.089 early libertarian writers who shared that deep, 00:32:49.230 --> 00:32:52.009 almost visceral distrust of federal intervention. 00:32:52.589 --> 00:32:54.410 Her genius was rooted in the black community, 00:32:54.630 --> 00:32:57.529 but her politics placed her far outside the emerging 00:32:57.529 --> 00:33:00.589 black political consensus. Far outside. And finally, 00:33:00.670 --> 00:33:02.450 we should touch on her personal spiritual views, 00:33:02.609 --> 00:33:05.069 which, like everything else about her, defy simple 00:33:05.069 --> 00:33:07.829 categorization. She rejected organized religion 00:33:07.829 --> 00:33:10.490 and theism. She wrote very clearly in Dust Tracks 00:33:10.490 --> 00:33:18.210 on a Road, And yet, This deeply skeptical, rational 00:33:18.210 --> 00:33:21.230 mind was the same person who dedicated her life 00:33:21.230 --> 00:33:24.410 to documenting and even participating in rituals 00:33:24.410 --> 00:33:28.390 of deep spiritual faith like voodoo and hoodoo. 00:33:28.569 --> 00:33:31.549 It's a profound contradiction. The anthropologist 00:33:31.549 --> 00:33:34.289 in her retained an intense professional interest 00:33:34.289 --> 00:33:36.869 in religion and folklore from a cultural standpoint. 00:33:37.470 --> 00:33:40.190 She didn't just study voodoo. She participated 00:33:40.190 --> 00:33:42.730 in the rituals alongside her research subjects, 00:33:42.930 --> 00:33:45.390 sometimes even to the point of trance, to better 00:33:45.390 --> 00:33:47.690 understand and document the cultural experience. 00:33:48.150 --> 00:33:50.390 The pursuit of anthropological knowledge often 00:33:50.390 --> 00:33:52.910 transcended her personal non -belief. It did. 00:33:53.049 --> 00:33:55.750 It showed that for Hurston, the search for truth 00:33:55.750 --> 00:33:57.990 about humanity was always more important than 00:33:57.990 --> 00:34:00.369 personal dogma. So we have this amazing, complex, 00:34:00.630 --> 00:34:03.569 prolific woman writer, scholar, firebrand, and 00:34:03.569 --> 00:34:05.789 yet she slid quickly into obscurity for decades. 00:34:06.759 --> 00:34:08.940 It wasn't just her contrarian politics that alienated 00:34:08.940 --> 00:34:10.539 her from the progressive intellectual community. 00:34:10.760 --> 00:34:13.340 It was a fundamental cultural shift in literary 00:34:13.340 --> 00:34:15.800 taste that left her behind. A shift centered 00:34:15.800 --> 00:34:18.179 on language and representation. That's right. 00:34:18.219 --> 00:34:20.619 Her distinctive use of African -American dialect, 00:34:20.900 --> 00:34:23.539 which she painstakingly documented through her 00:34:23.539 --> 00:34:26.239 fieldwork to represent the authentic speech pattern 00:34:26.239 --> 00:34:28.940 to the time, suddenly fell out of favor. Why? 00:34:29.639 --> 00:34:32.000 Why did the language she had championed as authentic 00:34:32.000 --> 00:34:34.980 suddenly become a problem? Younger writers and 00:34:34.980 --> 00:34:38.000 critics regarded dialect as demeaning, often 00:34:38.000 --> 00:34:41.000 linking it to minstrelsy or a caricature rooted 00:34:41.000 --> 00:34:43.300 in white racist traditions that exploited black 00:34:43.300 --> 00:34:50.130 culture for entertainment. So the literary landscape 00:34:50.130 --> 00:34:57.409 was shifting. Hurston, who championed the internal 00:34:57.409 --> 00:34:59.329 life and vernacular expression of the community, 00:34:59.570 --> 00:35:01.909 was perceived as having failed to evolve with 00:35:01.909 --> 00:35:04.429 the times. The outcome was financially devastating. 00:35:04.869 --> 00:35:07.210 Hurston struggled immensely in her last decade, 00:35:07.429 --> 00:35:09.949 often living in grinding poverty. She worked 00:35:09.949 --> 00:35:12.389 as a freelance writer. a substitute teacher, 00:35:12.570 --> 00:35:15.949 and in her 60s, she took work as a maid on Miami 00:35:15.949 --> 00:35:19.309 Beach's affluent Rivo Alto Island, fighting just 00:35:19.309 --> 00:35:21.690 to make ends meet and eventually relying on public 00:35:21.690 --> 00:35:23.869 assistance. There are details from this period 00:35:23.869 --> 00:35:26.289 that truly illustrate the tragedy of her neglect. 00:35:26.630 --> 00:35:29.690 The one that always gets me is from 1957. She 00:35:29.690 --> 00:35:31.829 managed to secure a job at the Pan American World 00:35:31.829 --> 00:35:34.530 Airways Technical Library at Patrick Air Force 00:35:34.530 --> 00:35:37.110 Base, hoping to leverage her extensive academic 00:35:37.110 --> 00:35:40.539 background. She was fired after only a few months 00:35:40.539 --> 00:35:43.119 for being deemed too well -educated for the role. 00:35:43.440 --> 00:35:45.280 The breadth of her knowledge, the very thing 00:35:45.280 --> 00:35:48.019 we celebrate, became an obstacle to earning a 00:35:48.019 --> 00:35:50.400 stable living. It's an indictment of the era 00:35:50.400 --> 00:35:52.840 that a major American author and anthropologist 00:35:52.840 --> 00:35:55.739 died in poverty. She passed away from hypertensive 00:35:55.739 --> 00:35:59.239 heart disease on January 28, 1960 at the age 00:35:59.239 --> 00:36:03.119 of 69 in a St. Lucie County welfare home. And 00:36:03.119 --> 00:36:05.639 she was buried in Fort Pierce, Florida. in an 00:36:05.639 --> 00:36:08.579 unmarked grave, seemingly forgotten by the world 00:36:08.579 --> 00:36:11.099 she had so brilliantly documented. But her story 00:36:11.099 --> 00:36:13.699 doesn't end with her burial. This is where we 00:36:13.699 --> 00:36:15.679 encounter a critical intervention that saved 00:36:15.679 --> 00:36:18.219 her intellectual legacy from complete destruction. 00:36:18.440 --> 00:36:21.679 Yes. After her death, a local law officer and 00:36:21.679 --> 00:36:24.360 friend, Patrick Duvall, noticed a yardman in 00:36:24.360 --> 00:36:26.820 Fort Pierce burning Hurston's papers and belongings. 00:36:27.179 --> 00:36:29.440 Burning them. Just destroying her life's work. 00:36:29.699 --> 00:36:33.039 Burning them. Duval stopped the burning, literally 00:36:33.039 --> 00:36:35.199 snatching her manuscripts and notes from the 00:36:35.199 --> 00:36:38.960 flames. This act of quick thinking saved an invaluable 00:36:38.960 --> 00:36:41.940 collection of literary and anthropological documents. 00:36:42.179 --> 00:36:44.099 What was in there? A manuscript of her novel 00:36:44.099 --> 00:36:48.250 Seraph on the Swanee. and, crucially, an unpublished 00:36:48.250 --> 00:36:50.909 biography of Herod the Great. At that saved material, 00:36:51.269 --> 00:36:53.690 that was the roadmap for her eventual scholarly 00:36:53.690 --> 00:36:56.650 rediscovery. It was. It was stored for two years 00:36:56.650 --> 00:36:59.150 and eventually donated to the University of Florida 00:36:59.150 --> 00:37:02.130 Libraries, Yale's James Weldon Johnson Collection, 00:37:02.369 --> 00:37:04.869 and other archives. And the catalyst for that 00:37:04.869 --> 00:37:07.550 rediscovery came over a decade later in 1973. 00:37:07.949 --> 00:37:11.090 With novelist Alice Walker. Walker was researching 00:37:11.090 --> 00:37:14.030 Hurston for a feature, and she and scholar Charlotte 00:37:14.030 --> 00:37:16.469 D. Hunt traveled to Fort Pierce to find her grave. 00:37:16.650 --> 00:37:18.570 And they found an unmarked plot in the general 00:37:18.570 --> 00:37:21.369 area and installed a marker. A marker that, though 00:37:21.369 --> 00:37:24.090 it mistakenly used the incorrect 1901 birth year, 00:37:24.250 --> 00:37:27.869 bore a defiant inscription, A Genius of the South, 00:37:28.010 --> 00:37:30.530 a line borrowed from the poet Jean Toomer. That 00:37:30.530 --> 00:37:33.230 marker was a declaration, and the official global 00:37:33.230 --> 00:37:35.969 revival kicked off just two years later. When 00:37:35.969 --> 00:37:38.590 Alice Walker published her seminal article in 00:37:38.590 --> 00:37:41.110 search of Zora Neale Hurston in Mrs. Magazine 00:37:41.110 --> 00:37:44.949 in 1975. And that single essay acted like an 00:37:44.949 --> 00:37:47.210 intellectual earthquake. It prompted a massive, 00:37:47.269 --> 00:37:50.610 decades -long resurgence of interest among scholars, 00:37:50.849 --> 00:37:53.570 readers, and literary critics who recognized 00:37:53.570 --> 00:37:56.030 that Hurston's unique voice, her celebration 00:37:56.030 --> 00:37:59.210 of internal community life, and her unapologetic 00:37:59.210 --> 00:38:02.719 use of vernacular were not flaws. but fundamental 00:38:02.719 --> 00:38:04.739 strengths. She was retroactively placed into 00:38:04.739 --> 00:38:07.599 the American literary canon. And today the recognition 00:38:07.599 --> 00:38:10.460 is finally widespread and ongoing. Eatonville 00:38:10.460 --> 00:38:13.179 hosts the annual Zora Festival. Her house in 00:38:13.179 --> 00:38:15.659 Fort Pierce is now a National Historic Landmark, 00:38:15.780 --> 00:38:17.980 and she's been inducted into the National Women's 00:38:17.980 --> 00:38:20.179 Hall of Fame and the Alabama Writers Hall of 00:38:20.179 --> 00:38:22.460 Fame. And we continue to see posthumous publications 00:38:22.460 --> 00:38:25.380 drawing from those salvaged papers. Including 00:38:25.380 --> 00:38:27.360 the complete folktales in every tongue got to 00:38:27.360 --> 00:38:30.380 confess in 2001, and the full narrative of the 00:38:30.380 --> 00:38:33.739 slave ship survivor in Barracoon in 2018. And 00:38:33.739 --> 00:38:35.969 there's one more major discovery coming. Her 00:38:35.969 --> 00:38:37.929 unfinished novel The Life of Herod the Great 00:38:37.929 --> 00:38:41.150 is forthcoming in January 2025, demonstrating 00:38:41.150 --> 00:38:44.349 that even 65 years after her death, her work 00:38:44.349 --> 00:38:47.170 is still teaching us and challenging us. Her 00:38:47.170 --> 00:38:49.570 legacy, once nearly lost to poverty and flames, 00:38:49.829 --> 00:38:52.530 is now celebrated globally as an essential pillar 00:38:52.530 --> 00:38:54.980 of American literature and anthropology. When 00:38:54.980 --> 00:38:57.860 we look back at Zora Neale Hurston's dual life, 00:38:58.019 --> 00:39:02.000 we see a trajectory of profound and often contradictory 00:39:02.000 --> 00:39:04.860 identities. She was the academically trained 00:39:04.860 --> 00:39:07.800 folklorist who insisted on capturing the authentic 00:39:07.800 --> 00:39:10.079 vernacular and voice of the black community and 00:39:10.079 --> 00:39:12.719 all its complexity. And the writer who used that 00:39:12.719 --> 00:39:15.119 voice to create timeless stories that transcended 00:39:15.119 --> 00:39:17.559 or perhaps rejected the political slogans of 00:39:17.559 --> 00:39:20.300 her time. Her entire life was an uncompromising 00:39:20.300 --> 00:39:23.000 stand for individuality and self -reliance, no 00:39:23.000 --> 00:39:25.349 matter the personal or. professional cost. Her 00:39:25.349 --> 00:39:27.429 trajectory is truly startling, spanning from 00:39:27.429 --> 00:39:29.329 being the sole black student at Barnard College, 00:39:29.550 --> 00:39:32.030 receiving mentorship from the greatest anthropologists 00:39:32.030 --> 00:39:34.489 of her generation, to fighting poverty as a maid 00:39:34.489 --> 00:39:37.309 on Miami Beach, deemed too well educated for 00:39:37.309 --> 00:39:39.909 a library job. It's just stunning. Her ability 00:39:39.909 --> 00:39:42.230 to operate within the highest academic circles 00:39:42.230 --> 00:39:44.829 while simultaneously immersing herself completely 00:39:44.829 --> 00:39:47.750 in the rituals of hoodoo and the realities of 00:39:47.750 --> 00:39:50.250 Florida lumber camps, not as an outsider, but 00:39:50.250 --> 00:39:52.469 as an accepted participating community member. 00:39:53.239 --> 00:39:55.239 raises a profound question about authenticity 00:39:55.239 --> 00:39:58.719 and representation in ethnographic work that 00:39:58.719 --> 00:40:01.920 scholars still debate today. And that deep tension, 00:40:01.980 --> 00:40:05.420 that uncompromising individualism also characterized 00:40:05.420 --> 00:40:09.119 her political life. It forces us to ask, how 00:40:09.119 --> 00:40:11.940 do we as readers and students of history reconcile 00:40:11.940 --> 00:40:14.780 the celebration of her artistic genius with the 00:40:14.780 --> 00:40:17.539 critique of her fiercely individualistic and 00:40:17.539 --> 00:40:20.239 often contrarian political choices? I mean, she 00:40:20.239 --> 00:40:22.179 once stood firmly against mandatory integration, 00:40:22.559 --> 00:40:25.139 not out of support for Jim Crow. Right. But because 00:40:25.139 --> 00:40:27.679 of a deeply rooted libertarian fear that centralized 00:40:27.679 --> 00:40:29.539 federal power would ultimately destroy black. 00:40:29.610 --> 00:40:31.650 cultural institutions like black schools and 00:40:31.650 --> 00:40:33.949 black colleges and strip individuals of their 00:40:33.949 --> 00:40:36.429 hard -won sense of self -reliance. This position 00:40:36.429 --> 00:40:38.650 alienated her from the civil rights consensus 00:40:38.650 --> 00:40:40.690 that defined the latter half of the 20th century. 00:40:41.039 --> 00:40:43.380 So here's the question for you, the listener, 00:40:43.539 --> 00:40:46.079 to mull over as you conclude this deep dive. 00:40:46.300 --> 00:40:49.219 Do her fiercely contrarian political positions, 00:40:49.519 --> 00:40:52.400 which undeniably led to her immediate professional 00:40:52.400 --> 00:40:54.739 obscurity among her progressive peers in the 00:40:54.739 --> 00:40:57.539 mid -20th century, ultimately serve to make her 00:40:57.539 --> 00:41:00.199 legacy of radical self -reliance even stronger 00:41:00.199 --> 00:41:02.619 and more provocative today? What does it mean 00:41:02.619 --> 00:41:04.719 to celebrate a genius whose political philosophy 00:41:04.719 --> 00:41:07.019 actively undermined the consensus of the very 00:41:07.019 --> 00:41:09.289 movement that produced her? That tension between 00:41:09.289 --> 00:41:11.369 cultural affirmation and political independence 00:41:11.369 --> 00:41:13.710 remains the deepest, most challenging part of 00:41:13.710 --> 00:41:14.829 the Zora Neale Hurston legacy.