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Inscribed on the number 4 Zora Neale Hurston Dust Tracks Heritage Trail Marker are the words:
Zora Neale Hurston Gravesite, Garden of Heavenly Rest Cemetery, Avenue S and 17th St
Zora Neal Hurston died on January 28, 1960. After friends from near and far raised over $600 in her memory, Zora’s funeral was held at the Peek Funeral Chapel (Heritage Trail Marker #7) on February 7, 1960. Zora was laid to rest in an unmarked grave in this (then segregated) cemetery. In the early 1970s, Alice Walker, author of The Color Purple, located the grave which she determined to be Zora’s and so began Zora’s second rise from near obscurity to fame.
Alice Walker Rediscovers Zora
“We are people. A people do not throw their geniuses away. If they do, it is our duty as witnesses for the future to collect them again for the sake of our children. If necessary, bone by bone.” Alice Walker, author, 1976.
In 1973, Alice Walker visited Eatonville, fully expecting it to be just as Zora described. As part of her pilgrimage, she discovered that Zora was buried in Ft. Pierce. Walker’s search for Zora’s gravesite is described in the last chapter of her story, “Looking for Zora,” A Zora Neal Hurston Reader, I Love Myself When I Am Laughing 1979, in which she describes searching the (then overgrown) cemetery with the help of a funeral home employee named Rosalee. Finally Walker stopped and decided to “ask” Zora for help.
“Zora! I yelled, as loud as I can, ‘are you out there?"
"Rosalee; “if she is, I sho hope she don’t answer you. If she do, I’m gone.”
“Zora!’ I call again. ‘I’m here. Are you?"
“If she is,” grumbles Rosalee, “I hope she’ll keep it to herself.”
“’Zora!’ Then I start fussing with her. “I hope you don’t think I’m going to stand out here all day, with these snakes watching me and these ants having a field day. In fact I’m going to call you just one or two more times…Zora!’ And my foot sinks into a hole. I look down. I am standing in a sunken rectangle that is about six feet long and about three or four feet wide.”
Thus Walker concluded that this was Zora’s gravesite, since it was the only one located near the center of the cemetery. She then ordered the headstone that now identifies the final resting place of the “Genius of the South.” Within a few years, an important biography of Zora, written by Robert Hemenway, was published, and Zora’s books began to reappear in the popular market.
In the 1980s, members of Zeta Phi Beta Sorority placed the large slab on top of the gravesite. This has become a popular place for visitors to leave offerings and messages in honor of Zora Neal Hurston.
“I will remember you all in my good thoughts, and I ask you kindly to do the same for me. Not only just for me. You who play zig-zag lightning of power over the world, with the grumbling thunder in your wake, think kindly of those who walk in the dust. And you who walk in humble places, think kindly too, of others. There has been no proof in the world so far that you would be less arrogant if you held the level of power in your hands. Let us all be kissing friends. Consider that with tolerance and patience, we godly demons may breed a noble in a few hundred generations or so. Maybe all of us who do not have the good fortune to meet or meet again, in this world, will meet at a barbeque.” Dust Tracks on a Road 1942."
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PICTURES:
First L: History Marker. M/L: Young Zora, location and date unknown. Zora was born in 1891 but always shaved ten to twelve years off her age. In an interview with the St Petersburg Times, biographer Valerie Boyd, Author of Wrapped in Rainbows: the Life of Zora Neale Hurston, said that “Hurston lied so she could get a Baltimore high school education, something free to those under age 20. At the time, Huston was 26 but got away with saying she was 16.” (Reaching out From the Rainbows,” by Adrienne P. Samuels, St. Petersburg Times. January 30, 2003). Photographer unknown. Courtesy of Zora Neale Hurston Collection, George A. Smathers Libraries, University of Florida, Department of Special Collections. M/R: Zora at the Federal Writers Project Booth, New York Times Book Fair, New York City, 1937. Zora authored seven major books, dozens of magazines and newspaper articles, and at least nine plays in her life. After blossoming during the Harlem Renaissance in the 1920s’ Zora met the 1030s Depression head on. While money and work were scarce for the most part, Zora plugged away. She wrote most of her books and plays during the 1930s, received grants for folklore work, and was hired by both Federal Theater Project and Federal Writers Project. Work Progress Administration (W.P.A.) photographer. Courtesy Photographs and Prints Division, Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture. The New York Public Library, Astor, Lenox and Tiden Foundations. R: Zora (center) with unidentified friends, in Ft Pierce, probably 1959 (age 68). Her weight gain was one symptom of increasingly poor health. Throughout her life, whatever she lived and worked, Zora managed to meet and enjoy people from all walks of life. She learned early in her career that pretense gained her false friends and no information. Photographer unknown. Courtesy of Zora Neale Hurston Collection, George a. Smathers Libraries, University of Florida, Department of Special Collections.
Second and Third: Art on columns in front of cemetery.
Pictures taken December 20, 2010.
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