Zora Neale Hurston

CTL-E-5957 · Person · writer · 1891–1960

VERIFIED evidence grade — master store (canonical CSV)

VERIFIED evidence grade — build store (JSON graph)

Combined Graph record U-03281 · provenance: canonical master store (CSV), record CTL-P-1211 + build store (JSON graph), record CTL-E-5957. Master record source: CTL seed 2026-10-16 — UNVERIFIED, verify before public citation.

Zora Neale Hurston (born January 7, 1891, Notasulga, Alabama; died January 28, 1960, Fort Pierce, Florida) was the novelist and anthropologist who carried Eatonville, Florida — the first incorporated all-Black town in the United States, where she was raised — into world literature. She studied at Howard University, where she co-founded the student newspaper The Hilltop, took her bachelor's at Barnard in 1928 under anthropologist Franz Boas, and did graduate work at Columbia. Her folklore collections Mules and Men (1935) and Tell My Horse (1938) recorded Black Southern and Caribbean life in its own voice, and her four novels — Jonah's Gourd Vine (1934), Their Eyes Were Watching God (1937), Moses, Man of the Mountain (1939), and Seraph on the Suwanee (1948) — were joined by the autobiography Dust Tracks on a Road (1942) and more than fifty stories, plays, and essays. She died in poverty and obscurity; Alice Walker placed her headstone in 1973, marking her “A Genius of the South.”

The record

• Role(s): creator
• Known for: Creator of Their Eyes Were Watching God

Notes

Staged 2026-10-16 under CTL-GOV-006 (Scan Tail Wave 2 — 747 Program, Wave 9; second Scan Tail packet at the founder's 40-record size). Gate A (2026-10-16): no Zora Neale Hurston entity in the live graph at 3,603 entities (exact / normalized / alias + token containment); ID CTL-E-5957 free. Supply: 747 Supply Ledger, Tier 4 — corpus scan tail tranche, ranks #751–#1400 (corpus-gap-candidates-2026-10-15.json ranked clean survivor #804). The scan supplied the NAME STRING ONLY; no fact in this record is sourced to it (CTL-GOV-004). SCOPE GATE: PASS — central Harlem Renaissance writer and Howard alumna; core scope, and a formative credit shared with Barry Jenkins (CTL-E-5954). Vital status: DECEASED — died January 28, 1960 (Wikipedia; Britannica). Tribute treatment in the Curator's Judgment. STATISTICS (sourced, dated): Four novels, 1934–1948; two folklore collections (1935, 1938); autobiography 1942; 50+ shorter works (Wikipedia). CLAIM-VS-RECORD SHOWN: Hurston routinely claimed birth in 1901 in Eatonville to qualify for free schooling; the documented record is January 7, 1891, Notasulga, Alabama, with Eatonville as her childhood home (Britannica). Walker placed the headstone in 1973. MEDIA: photo HELD (Zora Neale Hurston portrait, 1938 (Carl Van Vechten, Library of Congress) named as candidate; no file-page verification in this pass); chart FILLED (charts/chart-ctl-e-5957-zora-neale-hurston.svg); video HELD (no matching-entity CTL Short or verified-rights archival video staged); audio HELD (no rights-cleared matching-entity audio staged). MEDIA LAYER (staged 2026-10-16; full per-asset PHOTO-001 records + embed specs in the packet's staged JSON, Drive packet folder): map = N/A (Non-place record; no map attaches at the entity layer.) | visual_assets = HELD: | chart = FILLED (CTL-created SVG (black / deep red / gold) built only from this record's sourced facts) | video = HELD (No matching-entity CTL Short in the Shorts Link Map catalog (checked by name and variants), and no official/em) | audio = HELD (No audiobook excerpt or author recording with a CTL rights basis was staged in this pass.)

Referenced by

• Howard University — has alumnus → this record
• Their Eyes Were Watching God — authored by → this record

Sources

• Wikipedia, "Zora Neale Hurston" (accessed 2026-10-16) — January 7, 1891 Notasulga birth and January 28, 1960 Fort Pierce death, the Eatonville raising, Howard and The Hilltop, the 1928 Barnard degree under Boas, the four novels and folklore works with dates, and Walker's 1973 headstone — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zora_Neale_Hurston (primary source · build store)
• Encyclopaedia Britannica, "Zora Neale Hurston" (accessed 2026-10-16) — reference confirmation of the life and bibliography, including her practice of claiming 1901 and Eatonville as her birth facts to obtain free schooling, shown in the statistics — http://www.britannica.com/biography/Zora-Neale-Hurston (primary source · build store)
• https://www.amacad.org/person/zora-neale-hurston (verification source · master store)

Evidence note (master store)

Zora Neale Hurston is the author of the novel Their Eyes Were Watching God (1937) (American Academy of Arts and Sciences bio: 'Other works included the novel Their Eyes Were Watching God (1937)').

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Record CTL-E-5957 · Combined Graph record U-03281 · CultureTechLens Knowledge Graph · 3 sources · 2 mapped relationships.
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Researched and maintained by the CultureTechLens research program · CultureTechLens Combined Graph, Release 2026-11-04. Corrections are public: the corrections log.

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