What was some of Zora Neale Hurston's impacts on our society during the Harlem Renaissance?

Answer 1

You will find great amounts of info on wikipedia.org. Follow the link for lots of info. Just do not copy and paste my exact wording in your paper because I am just copying and pasting from this website:

The Harlem Renaissance
In 1926 Hurston, shortly after her degree, became one of the leaders of the literary renaissance happening in Harlem, producing the literary magazine Fire!!, along with Langston Hughes, and Wallace Thurman. This literary movement became the center of the Harlem Renaissance movement [3].


Literary career
Hurston applied her ethnographic training to document African American folklore in her critically acclaimed book Mules and Men (1935) along with fiction (Their Eyes Were Watching God) and dance, assembling a folk-based performance group that recreated her Southern tableau, with one performance on Broadway. Hurston was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship to travel to Haiti and conduct research on conjure in 1937. Her work was significant because she was able to break into the secret societies and expose their use of drugs to create the Vodun trance, also a subject of study for fellow dancer/anthropologist Katherine Dunham who was then at the University of Chicago.[4]

In 1954 Hurston was unable to sell her fiction works but was assigned to cover a small town murder trial for the Pittsburgh Courier of a racist white doctor who was murdered by Ruby McCollum, the prosperous black wife of the local bolita racketeer. She also contributed to a book by journalist/author and civil rights advocate William Bradford Huie called "Woman in the Suwanee County Jail".



Another source: http://www.si.umich.edu/chico/Harlem/text/hurston.html
It says: In 1925, she submitted a story, "Spunk," and a play, "Color Struck," to Opportunity magazine's literary contest, and won second place awards. From 1925 through 1927 she attended Barnard College, studying anthropology with Dr. Franz Boas. She subsequently did field research recording the folklore and ways of African Americans, first in Harlem, then throughout the rural South. Her work played a large role in preserving the folk traditions and cultural heritage of African Americans. She expressed her genius by combining her field notes with some autobiography and a vivid imagination to create some of the most exciting, authentic literature of the twentieth century.

Hurston was ahead of her time. Her literary activities were influential in bridging the gap between what came to be known as the first and second phases of the Harlem Renaissance. She began writing short stories in the 1920s, but her major achievements were generally between 1931 and 1943, when she wrote scholarly works on folklore and published six major novels. She was on the vanguard of the modern literary movement. Several of her books won recognition and her stories were published in the leading literary magazines of the times.

Answer 2

Zora Neale Hurston Impact

Answer 3

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