♪ > Good evening and welcome to For The People .

Many of us have read the works of Langston Hughes, Countee Cullen, Claude McKay, and Jean Toomer.

But not too many of us have read the works of Zora Neale Hurston.

Who was Zora Neale Hurston, and what were some of the hurdles placed before her to keep her from enjoying the level of recognition she deserved?

Just some of the questions we put to Doctor Sandra O'Neale of Emory University.

> She was a Black woman writer, novelist, anthropologist, folklorist, dramatist, during the Harlem Renaissance period in this country.

Publishing prolifically from around 1930 to 1950.

Listervelt> Such works as?

Dr.

O'Neale> Such works, her most famous novel and most successful one is Their Eyes Were Watching God .

She's got another novel, Moses, Man of the Mountain and Jonah's Gourd Vine .

She published the first extensive, and authentic collection of Black folklore, American Black folklore called Mules and Men .

She put on several plays, throughout the South.

Folk plays, putting together various reviews.

Song, dance, spirituals.

Published the Eatonville Anthology stories and folklore collections that she had heard, as a child.

Did the first authentic, anthropological report on the voodoo experience in America and the Caribbean in a book called Tell My Horse .

So she's extensively well written.

Listervelt> Tell us something about her childhood, if you would.

Dr.

O'Neale> What informed Zora?

She was born in a small all-Black town called Eatonville, Florida, which is in the western part of the state.

And up until she was nine years old, she only knew Black leadership.

Socially, economically, politically.

She saw Black role models before her continually.

She went to an all-Black school system where teachers demanded excellence of her.

Her father was the mayor of the town and pastor of a large Baptist church.

Her mother spent, all of her time every evening teaching Zora and her seven other brothers and sisters math, grammar, and exposing her to literature from around the world.

Listervelt> You said, she didn't think too much of integration.

Why?

Dr.

O'Neale> Precisely because of this Eatonville upbringing.

She felt it was an insult that, to say that Black children could not get a proper education unless they went to school with Whites.

She knew such security as a child from Eatonville that she could not relate to other Blacks who had grown up, always, in a shadow of inferiority towards Whites in an integrated or at least in a community where Whites were always making value judgments about Black life.

She had never known that.

So she expected and knew that Black was beautiful from the day that she was born.

Listervelt> When did her talents begin to blossom?

Dr.

O'Neale> After her mother died and her father remarried, she, really looked for a while there that she was going to die in obscurity.

But as a teenager, she joined a, troupe "Gilbert and Sullivan" that was touring the South.

And she quit the troupe 18 months later in Baltimore.

And she went to Morgan State Academy at that time, which was, a forerunner of Morgan State University.

And they recognized her talents, her genius, right away.

Got her through high school, and then she went on to Howard University.

And, by the time she was in her late 20s, she was in graduate school at Barnard College, and at Columbia University, studying anthropology under Franz Boas.

Listervelt> If we can back pedal a little bit, you said earlier that, Zora Neale Hurston didn't think too much of integration.

Were there a whole lot of other people who felt the same way but were carried down another path?

Or was she- Dr.

O'Neal> Virtually, she was a voice in the wilderness as far as Black leadership was concerned.

She was castigated by Roy Wilkins of the NAACP because of her public stance against integration.

She was, a conservative Republican.

She grew more and more conservative in her life who was against any kind of welfare system.

When the whole world was either democratic and many Black leaders were going communist such as Richard Wright, Ralph Ellison.

She believed in each Black person helping themselves, standing on their own two feet.

She didn't want to talk about slavery.

As far as she was concerned, slavery was over and that she had just as much potential of making it and achieving in this country as anyone else did.

Being a woman, being different in every respect.

Being conservative.

Being against the trend of the tide.

She was, of course, not very popular, and she was alone much of the time during her lifetime.

Listervelt> Well, what were some of the triumphs and obstacles of Zora Neale Hurston?

Dr.

O'Neal> Well, she was one of the first to introduce Black drama in the South.

She was the first to present authentic Black folklore on the New York stage, on the American stage.

Authentic Black life.

Even Black critics had to admit that most of what had been seen as Black language, Black music, Black folkloric tale, Black culture in general was synthetic, and was still informed by sort of that, shuffling Uncle Tom image from the 19th century.

And she was the first to present, you know, the true imagery and the beauty of Black life.

As I've said, her work and her folklore collections, gathering folklore material from throughout the South can now be related as a work that really connected the movements and functions of the diaspora.

In other words, of Black people around the world and the various tales and stories that she, preserved for us.

She had a lot of, triumphs, of course, the publication of her two successful novels.

A Guggenheim Fellowship that allowed her to go in the Caribbean and study voodoo.

But she had a lot of tragedy in her life.

She never was able to have a successful marriage, because women in those days were to be subservient to their men and she refused to do this.

She was sickly, most of her life with a stomach ailment that she had contracted, on a voodoo expedition.

She was most of the time, lived in poverty.

Impoverished... because she was determined to live off her writings and to be a full time writer and to starve if that was the only way that she could get money from writing.

Listervelt> Who were some of her contemporaries?

Males and females?

Dr.

O'Neale> Well, you would, of course- Langston Hughes, she and Hughes, collaborated together on a play.

All of the members of the Harlem Renaissance, Sterling Brown, Countee Cullen, Jean Toomer, Arna Bontemps... Black men writing during that time who, you know, much better known than Zora.

Richard Wright.

There were other women also, Georgia Douglas Johnson, Alice Dunbar Nelson, Gwendolyn Bennett, Nella Larsen, Jessie Fauset.

Listervelt> You said, in your presentation earlier, that... some of her contemporaries, had some unkind things to say about, Zora Neale Hurston.

Who were some of these people, and why were they, unkind?

Dr.

O'Neale> Well, Roy Wilkins didn't like it that she was against integration.

He attacked her publicly in the papers.

She and Langston Hughes fell out over, publication, production of a play which subsequently was never shown.

This play was Mule Bone and would have been a genius work.

Richard Wright and Ralph Ellison just said that her work, lacked.

No serious quality scholars like Alain Locke and Sterling Brown, they never really took her seriously as a scholar, as an anthropologist, or as a writer.

Despite all of the work that she was doing and the production that she had, going constantly.

She had the double jeopardy of being not just Black in the society, but also of being female.

Listervelt> How would you describe the level of prominence Black women have enjoyed in Black literature in this country?

Dr.

O'Neale> It's been minimal.

The first Black woman to write a novel was in 1890, Frances E. W. Harper, Iola Leroy .

That was never really recognized, although it was good, as good as any novel written by a Black man during the same period.

The Harlem Renaissance really saw the first emergence of Black women as writers.

Listervelt> Harlem Renaissance, 1920s?

Dr.

O'Neale> 1920s, uh-huh, in Harlem, New York.

But again, the works of women, were not as prolific as that of the men because they could not get the financial support or they gave up their careers, to marry and have families.

Zora was the only one who did not do that.

So she was able to produce more than her other sister writers during the time.

But even still, she did not receive the recognition.

Most Black women writers in America, are really coming to prominence in this last decade.

They're beginning to write.

They're beginning to publish.

And all of them look to Zora and acknowledge the inspiration that she has been in their lives.

Listervelt> While Black women, some Black women, are coming into prominence in the literary field.

You are aware, I know of the squabble that's going on between some Black male writers and Black female writers who think that the Black women are, are getting more than their fair share, for lack of a better term.

How do you see that?

Dr.

O'Neale> Well, as I heard Hoyt Fuller say, about two years ago before he died, that he just didn't want to have anything to do with the controversy, because actually, "if Black women writers were getting published more now, maybe it was because they were doing better work than, say, the Black men or male writers on the scene."

That's part of it.

I think, in actuality, you really haven't had- I can think of a few, perhaps Ishmael Reed or Ernest Gaines, James Allen McPherson- You really haven't had a lot of Black men who have attempted to make writing their full time careers.

As there are now, many other avenues for epitomal success open to the Black man.

Rather than, say, the Black woman than there were, you know, before the 60s.

Before the 60s... art, literature, theater were really the only avenues that, talented Black men or women could go into.

Paul Robeson's life proves that.

He had to become a singer because there was no avenue to be a scholar or a politician.

Listervelt> What role have, Black men played in the suppression of Black female expression?

Dr.

O'Neale> Well, I don't think there's been a deliberate role.

Black women in this country have never really been given the prominence of heroine in our literature, the way White women have.

Listervelt> Meaning?

Dr.

O'Neale> Meaning... typically in White American literature, you have always had, in every century outstanding novels, written by White men about White women.

You know, where women were the, the central controlling, thematic study.

You've never had that in Black American literature by Black men.

Not because Black men were trying to be difficult or because they had an aversion to Black women, necessarily, but because they had, they had a fight for freedom.

They were either trying to get out of slavery or they were trying to get out of, political and economic suppression.

So they wrote about the slave and the racial conditions in this country, rather than about love relationships between a man and a woman, that kind of thing.

Listervelt> Is that changing, you think, or what?

Dr.

O'Neale> I don't think so, in the literature that I see coming out by Black men.

They still, do not write- Ernest Gaines is just beginning to do it.

They still do not write, about love relationships with Black women, as say, a prominent study for their art.

They are moving more into Black community.

It's just that Black men and Black women writers have a little bit of a different message.

Black women are in a different position in this country, than Black men are.

Listervelt> What do you mean?

Dr.

O'Neale> Well, today, typically when we look at our culture, Black men are becoming more accepted in the society than Black women.

Largely through the advent of sports.

When you look at television, you no longer- If you're going to see a Black man, he is no longer just as an image of a "Tom."

But generally Black women, when you look at the television, are either totally absent or at least they are not images of femininity, such as the White woman.

You're going to see a Black woman, she's going to be a maid or, or she's going to weigh 3 or 400 pounds.

No one is looking at her as a feminized model.

Black men have been, I believe, greatly influenced by this.

I think, when they think of femininity, they generally tend to think of a White woman as feminine.

There's a new critical book out, by the way, that reflects this.

I think the title is, is beautiful.

It says, the title goes like this, All Women Are White, All Blacks Are Men, But Some of Us Are Brave.

Listervelt> That's a full title.

Dr.

O'Neale> That's the full title.

Listervelt> But even with, even with the men, in the sports, how much, how much really is that?

Running up and down the... Dr.

O'Neale> It's money.

It's entrance into the corporate world.

It's an image, for role models that, young children can look up to and follow.

It's an entrance into the political world, as we're beginning to see Black mayors spring up across the country.

There are- The country is, seems to have decided that Black men because, first of all, we are a male oriented society.

And Black men, to a large extent fulfill the macho image of what this country wants, the maleness.

While Black women do not seem to fulfill that, for femininity, what this country wants from Black women is motherhood.

They want to, you know, they want a "Mammy" image.

Listervelt> Now, I think I understand... the bottom line of what you're saying.

But for those people who are listening who might think that... Doctor O'Neale... feels that that, that Black men are pushing themselves and pushing Black women out.

Okay, well, how would you how would you respond to that?

Dr.

O'Neale> It's not Black men, it's the society.

All right.

We have never as a people had a control of our own destiny.

We have never as a people had a control on how we would report ourselves to this nation.

There were a couple of times when we had the illusion of control, such as in the Harlem Renaissance, the 1920s or the 1960s in America, in this century.

But, we've never had an opportunity to come together and say, "now, this is how we're going to present ourselves because we own a television network or we own a national newspaper chain, or we own a national radio station, or we even own a football, basketball, or baseball team."

So undoubtedly this is not what Black men are doing.

I really, in fact, I know that in a lot of ways, the, the typical love relationships between, most Black men and Black women have, has not been that estrange for people who are married.

It's just that in the society now, you are having a division between unmarried Black men and Black women.

Simply because the society itself has done so much to, our Black men, most, Black men, of marriageable age, are either in prison today or, spaced out from the Vietnam War era.

Lost, that's just a lost generation.

Or have changed their sexual preference by inducement.

Or, you know, are encouraged to marry White women.

So that leaves the Black woman virtually alone.

Especially the professional woman, who is not married.

They have very little hope.

And I think that the literature or the schism that you mentioned between Black male writers and Black women is reflecting that segment of the society.

Listervelt> I don't think anybody could sit down and say that there is no sexism in many Black men.

What do you think parents can do to try to, to try to... to work on that and work that out of Black boys?

Black boys.

Right.

Dr.

O'Neale> Well, first of all, teach Black boys that Black women are beautiful, okay.

That Black women have their own feminine qualities and contributions, and that Black women are the natural mate of their son.

And that there is a lot of suffering, in marrying outside of one's race.

There's a lot of personal suffering that, the, the Black male or female, and their children will endure.

But even more importantly, to teach their daughters to shoot for the stars as Zora Neale's parents, her mother especially, taught her.

That, no matter what the society says or the dominant culture or other Black people say, that she is an individual woman and that she does have the potential and the right to fully achieve and be all that she wants to be.

And not to let, anyone else's image or idea of who she is supposed to be influence her aspirations.

That's what parents need to do with their daughters.

And then get about exposing them to people like Zora Neale Hurston, other Black women writers, leaders, and role models.

Finding those role models and presenting them to the children, the sons, the daughters.

So that they know that, we have of our own an awful lot, for the children, from which the children can get inspiration and example.

Listervelt> You for good reason, think a whole lot of Zora Neale Hurston.

What would you say to... the college student, college graduate who has not read Zora Neale Hurston?

Dr.

O'Neale> That they're improperly and incompletely educated.

Listervelt> Why?

Dr.

O'Neale> First of all, with that college graduate as a Black American, that, they probably have never really seen the total expression of what that really means.

Who am I?

What is my culture?

Who are my people?

What are we capable of?

Can this be recorded in art, in a book that I can read and understand pass on to my children?

Are my own desires and expressions, you know, set down for history, for posterity?

Perhaps he may have read the big three James Baldwin, Ralph Ellison, Richard Wright.

But those big three generally have a, a male perspective that excludes the possibilities of a Black man's relationship with a Black woman, generally.

Or if there is a relationship, it is often minimal and antagonistic.

And Zora Neale is the balance for this.

She writes one of the first love stories, exquisitely beautiful love stories in Black American literature.

If that student is not Black, I say even more so that they are not completely, educated because that non-Black student has gone through a process of 16 years of education, and yet he really doesn't know the total American identity.

And Black literature is one way that White Americans can find out, you know, the total definition of what is an American.

What does it mean to be an American?

Listervelt> How has, quote, "the all important acceptance of White publishers" end quote, affected the relationship between Black female writers and Black male writers?

Dr.

O'Neale> Well... during the 60s, what White publishers expected from Black writers began to change.

We went through that very angry period where they expected militancy, militancy, militancy.

And, they received an awful lot of it.

But as Charles Rowell said at a recent conference of Black writers at Howard University, that, what the Black women did was to choose new themes, to write about.

Themes, that I believe the White publishers found so enthralling, such as, the relationship with the Black man, the loneliness, the decision not necessarily to have children, the aspirations to be an artist and to be a woman.

The despair, such as you see, in Ntozake Shange's For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide When the Rainbow Is Enough .

These themes, became, sort of the new standard for the literature.

You had people like Toni Cade Bambara writing about the Africanized religious experience of the Black American.

You had Toni Morrison with that marvelous fiction, this marvelous rhetoric, somehow mystical and symbolic or symbolic romantic at the same time.

And a White publisher simply had no choice but to publish.

So that the era of, the angry Bigger Thomas's, or the, angry James Baldwin's rejecting America... you know, the, Ralph Ellison's in the basement alone, contemplating a new existence because it was impossible to find one in America because actualized manhood could not be recognized or achieved in the literature, was over.

And Black women made the very process of writing itself... okay, a statement of equality in this country.

That she was not able to make through any other field, because there were no others open.

People like Toni Cade Bambara deliberately decided to become writers so that they could join the, effort for, equalization for freedom.

Okay.

And frankly, what were they going to do, be mayors of Chicago, you know, Los Angeles, Atlanta.

You see... be astronauts, football players, you know, those doors that are open for Black women in society, of the only one that we know of so far, whereby a Black woman can maximize her fullest potential, is in the arts, specifically as a writer.

And receive intellectual recognition for it that was very important.

Listervelt> Okay.

Let me ask a question that I really had not composed fully.

[laughter] And it may be sort of... an unfair question, but anyway- How important is it for Black writers to, in their backgrounds to come close to the general... I don't want to use the word typical, Black person in this country?

What I'm getting at is, is, is really this... if you have a person I've listened to, say, Richard Pryor, who's not a writer- Okay.

Dr.

O'Neale> Creative though.

Listervelt> All right.

And you listen to his life background, listen to his background, I listen to and I say, "Wow, Jesus Christ!"

You know, that kind of background, which was completely different from mine, not sheltered, down in Berkeley County.

I guess considered poor at the time, on a farm.

But I listen to that... and it's completely alien.

So my question is... how important is it for... should we not watch who our writers are?

If that makes any sense?

[laughter] Dr.

O'Neale> Well, of course, and for several reasons.

Number one, we have no other enduring institution beside what our writers leave, what our artists leave.

We used to have what we call the Black school that's rapidly fading.

We're fighting to keep alive what's there, but in a large sense of the word, the spirit of the Black schools that was present when we had no other school to go to, has passed away.

Perhaps forever.

We used to have a Black church.

But for all intensive purposes, the civil rights movement took almost the soul and the substance out of our experience in that church.

That church used to be the total center of our community.

That was our social life.

That was our political leadership.

And consequently, our political leadership left the pulpit and went into politics to a great extent.

And it's been diffused by ecumenical movements and various other attempts to intellectualize Black experience.

We've talked about the Black home so that 10, 20 years from now, in a totally integrated world where you will then have a second generation which has never known a separate Black community, the only way that our grandchildren will really know who we were, what our lives were, what this struggle meant, okay, and what they have gained.

More importantly, what they have lost is through our literature.

There is no other way.

We have not necessarily been... we haven't been included in the history of this country.

We have not been included in the, cultural, recording of of what America says makes her great, you see.

All that we have to prove who we were from our own perspective is our writing.

Listervelt> We've talked briefly about Zora Neale Hurston, the attitude about integration.

But what about Doctor O'Neale's attitude about the impact of integration or desegregation, however you look at it, on Black people?

Dr.

O'Neale> Now, I thought you said the question before was the difficult one.

[laughter] Well, we have, of course, gained, a few material things, as I've heard Harry Belafonte say, that White America never understood that what we wanted was not the right to live next door to him, or really the right to go to school with his children, or the right to marry his daughter.

What we wanted was economic opportunity.

And during the movement, when we decided to go for the vote rather than for the dollar, and John Lewis, a city councilman now in Atlanta who was a prominent civil rights leader with Martin, now admits that that may have been our mistake.

We have gained, however, somewhat economically and for all intensive purposes, we are somehow diffused into the mainstream of society.

But as I said in the presentation tonight, if Zora, we're alive today, I believe many people would tell her that she was right in being against integration, because we have lost so much from my own perspective and other research that I'm doing on a book that I'm finishing now.

The thing that we have to watch and then for the rest of this century is this sense of identity.

Our children don't have role models.

Our children are being influenced by a television, a communicative, a financial, economic, political system, which, in effect, tells them... in effect tells them that they do not exist.

Listervelt> Some people would say, that the only- Dr.

O'Neale> You asked me a loaded question.

[laughter] You didn't let me finish.

Listervelt> You go ahead, finish.

Dr.

O'Neale> No you go ahead.

That's alright.

Listervelt> Some people would say that the only identity Black children need is that American label.

Dr.

O'Neale> Well, that's not the only identity that the Jewish American has.

That's not the only identity that the Italian American has.

That's not the only identity that any American has who looks to Europe for their existence, who celebrates Queen Elizabeth and Prince Philip coming to this country.

They have an identity of what their, what their roots are.

And they need that because this country is too new and too amalgamated for them to have a sense of history and a sense of roots.

Okay.

Now, why is it that we are told that it's enough for us to be an American?

Frankly, the country has never defined what that means.

You see, is it a race?

Is it a nationality?

What is it?

Okay.

For our own survival, we must know that we are African.