Visit the "Other" Florida
Celebrate author Zora Neale Hurston in her hometown of Eatonville, Florida, from January 24 through 27.
Eatonville, reportedly the oldest incorporated African American municipality in the country, hosts the Zora Neale Hurston Festival of the Arts and Humanities. This event highlights the cultural contributions of people of African descent with four days of theater, music, folklore, and literature.
Zora Neale Hurston (1903–60) was one of the most accomplished women of the Harlem Renaissance. An acclaimed novelist, dramatist and short story author, she also studied anthropology and documented the folklore of black communities. Hurston's works celebrate the courage and struggles of African Americans in the rural south.
Hurston's famous book of local tales, Mules and Men, parallels William H. Johnson's Cotton Pickers, shown below. Like Hurston's study, Johnson carefully examined the rituals of farm work, the pairing of humans and animals in the agricultural endeavor, and the cyclical, almost instinctive aspects of rural life.
Pictured top: Richard Benson, born 1943, Noble Black Women: The Harlem Renaissance and After, palladium print, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Transfer from the National Endowment for the Arts.
Source: Gwen Everett.Art and Life of William H. Johnson: A Guide for Teachers ( Washington, D.C.: National Museum of American Art, 1991) at http://americanart.si.edu/education/guides/whj/main.html.
Pictured bottom: William H. Johnson, 1901–1970, Cotton Pickers, about 1940, watercolor and pencil on paper, 10 3/4 x 11 1/2 in., Smithsonian American Art Museum, Gift of the Harmon Foundation.