Editing Zora Neale Hurston (section)

==Early life==
Zora Neale Hurston was born in 1891, the fifth of eight children of John Hurston and Lucy Ann Hurston (''née'' Potts). All four of her grandparents had been born into slavery. Her father was a [[Baptist]] preacher and [[tenant farmer|sharecropper]], who later became a carpenter, and her mother was a school teacher. She was born in [[Notasulga, Alabama]], on January 7, 1891. This was her father's hometown and her paternal grandfather was the preacher of a Baptist church.<ref name="autogenerated17" />{{rp|14–17, 439–440}}<ref name="hurston5" />{{rp|8}}

When she was three, her family moved to [[Eatonville, Florida]]. In 1887, it was one of the first all-[[African American|black]] towns incorporated in the United States.<ref>{{cite news|url=https://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/29/us/29florida.html |last=Cave |first=Damien |title=In a Town Apart, the Pride and Trials of Black Life|date=September 28, 2008|newspaper=[[The New York Times]] |access-date=August 1, 2018|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20180802014556/https://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/29/us/29florida.html|archive-date=August 2, 2018|url-status=live}}</ref> Hurston said that Eatonville was "home" to her, as she was so young when she moved there. Sometimes she claimed it as her birthplace.<ref name="autogenerated17" /> A few years later in 1897, her father was elected as mayor of the town. In 1902 he was called to serve as minister of its largest church, Macedonia Missionary Baptist.

In 1901, some northern school teachers visited Eatonville and gave Hurston several books that opened her mind to literature. She later described this personal literary awakening as a kind of "birth".<ref name="jsl">{{Cite book |last=Jones, Sharon L. (Sharon Lynette) |title=Critical companion to Zora Neale Hurston: a literary reference to her life and work |year=2009 |isbn=978-0-8160-6885-2 |location=New York}}</ref>{{rp|3–4}}

As an adult, Hurston often used Eatonville as a setting in her stories—it was a place where African Americans could live as they desired, independent of white society. Hurston grew up in Eatonville and described the experience in her 1928 essay, "[[How It Feels To Be Colored Me]]". Eatonville now holds an annual "Zora! Festival" in her honor.<ref name="zfh">{{cite web |title=Zora! Festival Homepage |url=http://www.zorafestival.org |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20190426193152/https://zorafestival.org/ |archive-date=April 26, 2019 |access-date=June 21, 2017 |website=Zora! Festival |language=en}}</ref>

Hurston's mother died in 1904. Her father married Mattie Moge in 1905.<ref name="Zora Neale Hurston" /><ref name="chdr">{{Cite web|url=https://chdr.cah.ucf.edu/hurstonarchive/?p=chronology|title=Chronology of Hurston's Life|website=University of Central Florida|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20180802011229/https://chdr.cah.ucf.edu/hurstonarchive/?p=chronology|archive-date=August 2, 2018|url-status=live}}</ref> This was considered scandalous, as it was rumored that he had had sexual relations with Moge before his first wife's death.<ref name="autogenerated17" />{{rp|52}} Hurston's father and stepmother sent her to a Baptist boarding school in [[Jacksonville, Florida]], but she was dismissed after her parents stopped paying her tuition.