Common Law

Zora Neale Hurston was born January 7, 1891 in Notasulga, Alabama. Hurston was the daughter of a carpenter, sharecropper, and Pastor John Hurston and Lucy Ann Potts- Hurston ho was a retired teacher turned homemaker. When Hurston was three years old her father relocated their family to Eatonville, Florida. Eatonville is a city outside of Orlando, Florida. Eatonville is considered one of the first incorporated black towns in Florida just a couple miles outside of Orlando, Florida. Eatonville is attributed with shaping Hurston’s view on race. Hurston because she grew up in a town where everyone was black the teachers, shop owners, and the mayor who was at one point her father. Because her community was so black she never had to experience the Jim Crow south meaning her views on race were not the same as some of her literary peers. Later in life Hurston would go on to glorify Eatonville in her writing calling it “a place where blacks could live as they desire”. Hurston also goes on to say that Eatonville was the home of her literary birth she says this because in Eatonville was visited by southern school teachers who gave Hurston books. Hurston felt that those books opened her mind to something she never experienced. Hurston would reach a rough patch in her life in 1904 when her mother died. Hurston had a really close relationship with her mother that did not exist with her father. Hurston’s mother was very encouraging of Hurston’s free spirit often telling her children to “Jump at de Sun”.* her father was less encouraging and often bumped heads with a young Hurston. Hurston was not his favorite child because he wanted a son when Hurston and to make matters worse she was so free spirited. His efforts were always geared towards taming Hurston’s free spirit and they often ended in vain. In 1904 when Hurston was 13 years old Hurston’s mother passed away. Hurston’s father immediately remarried which was considered a scandal around Eatonville because of the...