Zora Neale Hurston was born in 1903 in Eatonville, Florida, according to some sources. Others place her birth as early as January 7, 1891, but her headstone reads 1901-1960. She was the seventh of eight children born to John Hurston, a Baptist preacher, carpenter, and town mayor, and his wife, Lucy, a former schoolteacher. To the young Hurston, rural Eatonville was "a city of five lakes, three croquet courts, 300 brown skins, 300 good swimmers, plenty of guavas, two schools and no jailhouse." It also was an area rich in the black folk traditions and history that permeates Hurston's literature.

Hurston left her job as a wardrobe girl in Florida for a job as an actress in a traveling light-opera troupe. Eventually she found herself in Baltimore, Maryland. Determined to complete her education, she attended Morgan Academy in 1917 and 1918, and then went on to Howard University in Washington, D.C., where...