She took data by hand, learned songs and verses by heart and recorded them herself. Unlike other anthropologists from the project, Hurston didn’t use recording equipment in the field. “But it was also just a way of documenting American culture.”

“Part of what they were doing was creating a set of travel guides for all the states,” Winick said. Photo courtesy of the Library of Congress Hurston’s Florida folklife research proposal. Stephen Winick, editor and folklorist at the Library of Congress’ American Folklife Center, where a collection of recordings from Hurston’s Florida Folklife project can be found, said Hurston was paid by the WPA and Florida government to collect folklore local to areas of the state where she grew up. So Hurston proposed anthropological research on Florida folklife to the the Federal Writers Project, a 1935 program implemented through the United States Work Progress Administration (WPA) as a means to employ researchers and historians. Lillios said Hurston’s mentor - “father of anthropology” Franz Boaz - urged her “to collect the folklore remnants” of an African-American culture he felt was disappearing. Hurston insisted on writing Lewis’ story the way he spoke it: in a thick, vernacular dialect that left many of her black contemporaries worried the book would reinforce stereotypes.Īn author, anthropologist and Harlem Renaissance legend, Hurston was also a folklorist, dedicated to strict, accurate field transcriptions and the idea that black culture was not monolithic, according to Anna Lillios, a professor of English at the University of Central Florida.

While Hurston’s literary portrait of Lewis’ life provided an intimate account of the legacy of slavery, it met with criticism from many black academics and thinkers of the time, who felt the manuscript was counterproductive to the mission of uplifting the perception of African Americans among the dominant white society. Zora Hurston beating the hountar, or mama drum, 1937.

Zora neale hurston the last black cargo