Zora Neale Hurston

Born on Jan. 7, 1891, in Notasulga, Alabama, raised in Eatonville, Florida. She was a novelist, an anthropologist, American folklorist, author during the time of the Harlem Renaissance, best known for the 1937 novel Their Eyes Were Watching God. Zora Neale Hurston struggled to finish her schooling and eventually joined a Gilbert & Sullivan traveling troupe as a maid to the lead singer. in 1917 she was 26 and still didn't finfish high school. she needed to present herself as a teenager to qualify for free public schooling, so she lopped 10 years off her life, giving her age as 16 and the year of her birth as 1901. Apparently, she had the looks to pull it off. She graduated from Morgan Academy (high school division of Morgan College (now Morgan State University) in 1918. Attended Howard University and received her B.A. in anthropology from Barnard College, Columbia University in 1928.