The Library of Congress has been digitizing unique primary source collection materials since the 1990's. The following digital collections focus on materials connected to the life and work of Zora Neale Hurston as a folklorist and artist.
Florida Folklife from the WPA Collections, 1937 to 1942
This collection combines sound recordings and manuscript materials from four discrete archival collections made by Work Projects Administration (WPA) workers from the Joint Committee on Folk Arts, the Federal Writers' Project, and the Federal Music Project from 1937-42. This online presentation provides access to 376 sound recordings and 106 accompanying materials, including recording logs, transcripts, correspondence between Florida WPA workers and Library of Congress personnel, and a proposal to survey Florida folklore by Zora Neale Hurston. The presentation includes recordings of Hurston made by Herbert Halpert, in which she can be heard singing songs she collected in Florida and the Bahamas and of her talking about her field research. American Folklife Center.
Lomax Collection (photographs)
The collection includes 400 snapshot photographs made in the course of sound recording expeditions carried out by John Avery Lomax, Alan Lomax, and Ruby Terrill Lomax, between 1934 and ca. 1950 for the Library of Congress. Included are photographs of Zora Neale Hurston. Prints and Photographs Divison.
Voices Remembering Slavery: Freed People Tell Their Stories
The recordings of former slaves in Voices Remembering Slavery: Freed People Tell Their Stories took place between 1932 and 1975 in nine states. Twenty-three interviewees discuss how they felt about slavery, slaveholders, coercion of slaves, their families, and freedom. Zora Neale Hurston was among the interviewers. American Folklife Center.
Zora Neale Hurston Plays at the Library of Congress
This collection present ten plays written by Hurston (1891-1960), author, anthropologist, and folklorist. Deposited as unpublished typescripts in the United States Copyright Office between 1925 and 1944, most of the plays remained unpublished and unproduced until a manuscript curator rediscovered them in the Copyright Deposit Drama Collection in 1997. The plays reflect Hurston's life experience, travels, and research, especially her knowledge of folklore in the African-American South. Manuscript Division.
Through blog posts, podcasts and videos presentations of public programs and concerts, you can learn more about the Library's collections directly from staff and invited experts.
The highlighted blog posts below focus on the topic of “Zora Neale Hurston.”
Rebecca Newland, the 2013-15 Library of Congress Teacher in Residence uses recordings of Zora Neale Hurston to discuss ways of using ethnographic field recordings in the classroom. (Teaching with the Library of Congress: June 4, 2015)
Library of Congress writer/editor Wendi A. Maloney discusses the play scripts identified in Library of Congress copyright deposits in 1997. (Library of Congress blog: March 13, 2017)
Folklorist Stephen Winick shares content from an the first Roots in the Archive column in No Depression about Zora Neale Hurston’s recordings. (Folklife Today: April 13, 2020)
The selected podcasts below focus on the topic of “Zora Neale Hurston.”
In this interview from 1935, Mr. Wallace Quarterman of St. Simons Island, Georgia, recalls the last days of slavery for Zora Neale Hurston, Alan Lomax, and Mary Elizabeth Barnicle of the Library of Congress. Hurston can be heard asking questions. (Voices from the Days of Slavery Podcast: June 29, 2009)
Gage Averill discussed the significance of Alan and Elizabeth Lomax's collection and documentation of a wide variety of Haitian classical music, dance music and vodou music in 1936-1937, and related work by Zora Neale Hurston, Katherine Dunham and others. He discussed the process of repatriating the recordings following the 2010 Haiti earthquake. American Folklife Center, March 15, 2017,
View ALL Library of Congress event videos related to Zora Neale Hurston