ABSTRACT
Zora Neale Hurston was born on January 7, 1891 in Alabama and raised in Eatonville, Florida, one of the first all-Black incorporated towns in the US Growing up in Eatonville influenced Zora's understanding of race, the possibilities of Black leadership, and the value of Black life. Howard University was the incubator for some of Hurston's early award-winning fiction that established her as an emerging voice in the Harlem Renaissance, her studies at Columbia with Boaz offered a conduit for research that validated her belief in the full humanity of Black people across the Diaspora. Ethnographic work, Hurston provides a framework for critiquing social structures while affirming Black agency. In a 1950 essay, "What White Publishers Won't Print," Hurston articulates this risk in terms of what white audiences were willing to believe and consume. She critiques the continued use of uncomplicated stereotypes to represent Black lives and admonishes white audiences for their lack of curiosity about the internal lives of Black people.
