Zora Neale Hurston

She was born on Jan. 7 1891 in Notasulga, Alabama, and when she was still a baby, her family moved to Eatonville, Florida where black people lived normally. She had 7 siblings, her father was a preacher and her mother directed a Christian curricula at their church. In 1928, she graduated from Barnard College and in 1935, she published her first novel, Jonah's Gourd Vine and then soon after published Mules and Men. During the late 30's and early 40's, she published more masterful novels like Tell My Horse and Their Eyes Were Watching God. When she finished her autobiography called Dust Tracks on a Road, she was finally reconized as an author and was profiled in Twentieth Century Authors and Who's Who in America, Current Biography. In 1948, she published her last novel Seraph on the Suwanee. On January 28, 1960, she died of a stroke at 69, and her neighbors tried to save money on her funeral, but they couldn't afford a headstone, and her grave remained unmarked until 1973.