Poking and Prying with a Purpose

Hurston's attempts to formalize her curiosity took her to a number of educational institutions. She graduated from Baltimore's Morgan Academy – the high school affiliated with the historically Black Morgan State University – when she was 26, beginning her long practice of shading various intimacies of her life. She would later describe research as a "formalized curiosity. It is poking and prying with a purpose. Hurston's ethnographic work is an exemplar of the value of insider research and the importance of an inward gaze in appraising one's role as researcher in communities one is closely connected to. Through her fiction, scholarly, and autobiographical work, we see Hurston's Black feminist sociological perspective emerge. Further investigation of Hurston's assessment of sociology is warranted. In reading her perception of what Ladner would come to call Black sociology, Hurston shows appreciation for those who do not use their work to promote social scientific racism.