December 21, 2007 - County Celebrate's Zora's Birthday Jan. 5

If Harlem Renaissance author Zora Neale Hurston were alive today, she would be celebrating her 116th birthday in January.  Instead, she died at 69 years of age in 1960 and was placed in an unmarked grave in a segregated cemetery in Fort Pierce. 

To mark her literary achievements, the Zora Neale Hurston Festival Committee and the St. Lucie County Cultural Affairs Council will celebrate Hurston’s birthday on Saturday, January 5 at 1 p.m. at the Zora Neale Hurston Library at 3008 Avenue D in Fort Pierce.  This event is FREE and open to the public. 

The party will include a birthday cake, a performance by the Avenue D Boys Choir, and an appearance by Madafo, an African-American storyteller who will share traditional and contemporary tales with original music that reflects a mixture of periods and styles in African-American history. 

The birthday party is the first of several events leading up to the 4th annual Zora Fest!  The Harlem Renaissance on March 27 - 30, 2008.  On the festival day, March 29, visitors to Lincoln Park Academy will be invited to attend lectures with authors Lucy Hurston, niece of the famed author, and biographer Valerie Boyd, children's programs with Madafo, an African-American storyteller, and other local musicians, vendors and presentors.

 The late Zora Neale Hurston came to Fort Pierce in 1957 to work for the local black newspaper, The Chronicle.  Her friend, publisher C.E. Bolen, encouraged her to leave her job as a librarian at Patrick Air Force Base in Satellite Beach.  She also worked part-time at the then-segregated high school, Lincoln Park Academy, today one of Fort Pierce's premiere magnet schools.   

After several strokes and other financial problems, Hurston died in a county nursing home and was buried in an unmarked grave.  In 1972, The Color Purple author Alice Walker came to Fort Pierce to find Hurston's grave and get it marked.  Since then, Fort Pierce and St. Lucie County officials have landscaped the site and upgraded the marker.  They have also established the Zora Neale Hurston Dust Tracks Trail to designate the places where she lived and worked in the community.

Hurston is best known as the ''Queen of the Harlem Renaissance.'' This time period marked a period of resurgence in black literature, music, drama and other arts.  Hurston received many awards for her literature and other writings in the 1920s and early 1930s.  She also earned a college education at Barnard College in New York City.  Her most noted work, ''Their Eyes Were Watching God,'' was published in 1937.

Among the many black entertainers and literary figures of the time were:  poet Langston Hughes, poet and sociologist W.E.B. DuBois, musicians Count Basie and Duke Ellington and songtresses Ethel Waters and Bessie Smith.

With the Depression hitting America, Hurston went on to work for the Federal Writers Project to capture African-American tales, music and stories in the southeast, particularly in Florida where she lived as a young girl in Eatonville, northeast of Orlando, and later in Fort Pierce where she spent her final years. Her project also included visits to Haiti for the study of voodoo.

For additional information, contact the St. Lucie County Cultural Affairs Council at (772) 462-1767 or check out the website at http://www.stlucieco.gov/cultural_affairs