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    • TB Times: St. Augustine coming to grips with civil rights history
    • Strawberry Festival organizers collecting material for new history book
    • Tarpon Springs' Greektown added to National Register as Traditional Cultural Property
    • Volunteers begin cleanup of historic Ocala cemetery
    • Jax museum presents 'Megalodon,' biggest-ever shark
    • Proposed museum switch generates anger in St. Pete
    • Report: Ocala's original cemetery lying in ruins
    • Rock and Roll Hall of Fame seeking camera-wielding Elvis fans
    • Service of Florida Jews in World War II focus of new WLRN doc
    • Seventeen honored for Big Bend preservation efforts
    • Long dresses, long pants, no shorts: Life before AC was uncool
    • Sunken shipwrecks are being turned into "parks" off Florida coast
    • Run-down Dunedin hotel to be rebuilt in same architectural style
    • Painting at Ringling Museum leads scholar to discover slavery roots of Spanish painter Juan de Pareja
    • Hampton Inn in downtown Bradenton gets state historic preservation award
    • Civil War re-enactment draws criticism in Holly Hill
    • New documentary spotlights Anna Maria Historic Green Village
    • Tampa-area NAACP launching effort to save historic rooming house
    • Ride on "America's Movie Train" this weekend in Ocoee, Winter Garden
    • Tampa's historic Kress building set for reimagination
    • 67-year-old shipwreck off Florida identified
    • Florida History Today - Project studies South Florida native communites
    • Florida History Today - Tarpon Springs halts Sponge Docks upgrades
    • Florida History Today - Compromise reached on Tequesta circles preservation
    • Florida History Today - Sears homes remembered in Sanibel
  • On this day in Florida history - August
    • Aug. 15, 1887 - Eatonville becomes one of first all-black towns in U.S.
    • Aug. 13, 2004 - Hurricane Charley kicks off unusually active 'cane year
    • Aug. 12, 1981 - Developed in Boca Raton, first PC released by IBM
    • Aug. 11, 1987 - Santeria church vows to sacrifice animals despite Hialeah ban
    • Aug. 10, 1981 - Tragic discovery confirms death of missing Adam Walsh, 6
    • Aug. 9, 1956 - Reporters look down noses covering Elvis in Daytona Beach
    • Aug. 8, 1896 - Cross Creek, Yearling author Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings born
    • Aug. 6, 1868 - Great Seal of the State of Florida adopted by Legislature
    • Aug. 5, 1763 - Britain takes over Pensacola, expands slavery over two-decade Fla. rule
    • Aug. 4, 1842: U.S. gives free Florida land to settlers willing to fight Seminoles
    • Aug. 1, 1939 - Florida Highway Patrol formed; to begin with 60 troopers
  • On this day in Florida history - July
    • July 31, 1962 - Actor, tax evader Wesley Snipes born in Orlando
    • July 30, 1956: Delta Burke, star of tabloids and television, born in Orlando
    • July 28, 1896: With railroad into town, city of Miami incorporated
    • July 27, 1816: U.S. forces obliterate 300+ free blacks, Indians at 'Fort Negro'
    • July 26, 1876 - Daytona incorporated, named after founder Matthias Day
    • July 25, 1884 - St. Petersburg Times debuts as West Hillsborough Times
    • July 25, 1957 - Country star, actress Pam Tillis born in Plant City
    • July 23, 1836 - Cape Florida Lighthouse attacked by Seminoles
    • July 22, 1964 - First 536 home lots sold in new city of Coral Springs
    • July 21, 1821 - St. Johns and Escambia become first two Florida counties
    • July 20, 1969 - U.S. astronauts walk on the moon
    • July 19, 1952 - Skynyrd guitarist Allen Collins is born; stardom and tragedy await
    • July 18, 1940 - Winners of St. Pete mayor's safety slogan contest announced
    • July 17, 1821 - Spain officially transfers Florida to United States
    • July 16, 1943 - Former 'Canes, Dolphins, Cowboys coach Jimmy Johnson born
    • July 15, 1997 - Killer gigolo guns down Gianni Versace at South Beach mansion
    • July 14, 1921 - Florida's most famous 'cracker cowboy' dies at 58
    • July 13, 1927: Officials dump $250k in liquor into Gulf Stream
    • July 10, 1972 - First of two major party conventions opens in Miami Beach
    • July 9, 1957 - Pass-a-Grille and three other towns form St. Pete Beach
    • July 8, 2011 - Last space shuttle launched from Cape Canaveral
    • July 7, 1983 - 'Operation Everglades' drug bust rocks Everglades City
    • July 6, 2003 - 'Hillbillies' star Buddy Ebsen, raised in Orlando, dies at 95
    • July 5, 1928 - Elks begin arriving for 1st Florida national convention
    • July 4: Florida celebrates America's Independence Day
    • July 3, 1971 - Doors singer, Melbourne native Jim Morrison dies
    • July 2, 1961: Key West icon Ernest Hemingway dies; cats live on
    • July 1, 1951: St. Pete woman's burning death baffles investigators
  • On this day in Florida history - June
    • June 1, 1937 - Amelia Earhart leaves Miami to begin final voyage
    • June 2, 2008 - Bo Diddley, 79, dies at his home in Archer
    • June 3, 1961 - Arrest made in case that leads to 'right to an attorney'
    • June 4, 1939 - Jewish refugee ship turned away from Florida coast
    • June 5, 2013 - Zephyrhills woman, 84, claims $590 million Powerball jackpot
    • June 6, 1990 - Broward Judge rules 2 Live Crew album 'obscene'
    • June 7, 1928 - Two elections workers shot in Tampa ballot box heist
    • June 8, 1888 - First train rolls into terminus "St. Petersburg"
    • June 9, 1903 - Flagler's Breakers Hotel burns down in Palm Beach
    • June 10, 1991 - South Florida learns it will get new major league baseball team
    • June 11, 1953 - Sabal Palmetto palm becomes Florida's state tree
    • June 12, 1913: With first bridge, Miami Beach is open for business
    • June 13, 1974 - Askew appoints first female Cabinet member
    • June 14, 1966 - FSL's Miami and St. Pete set record for longest baseball game
    • June 15, 1822: City of Jacksonville founded, named after Andrew Jackson
    • June 16, 1955 - Judge Chillingworth and wife go missing
    • June 17. 1942 - German U-boat saboteurs land at Ponte Vedra Beach
    • June 18, 1983 - Sally Ride becomes first American woman in space
    • June 19, 1972 - Hurricane Agnes makes landfall in Panhandle
    • June 20, 2003 - Non-profit Wikipedia established in St. Petersburg
    • June 21, 1926 - Miami barbers don't want to be called 'chirotonsors'
    • June 22, 1990 - Florida bans thong bikinis in state parks
    • June 23, 1938 - Marine Studios, 'world's first oceanarium,' opens
    • June 24, 1987 - S. Fla's most famous resident, Jackie Gleason, dies at 71
    • June 25, 1981 - Dolphins QB Bob Griese retires after 14 seasons
    • June 26, 1964 - Governor orders extra police to riot-torn St. Augustine
    • June 27, 1964 - State tells Daytona: Stop price-gouging your tourists
    • June 28, 1911 - Big Cypress Indian Reservation created by President Taft
    • June 29, 1931 - Monticello hits 109 degrees -- hottest-ever for Florida
    • June 30, 1975 - Cher marries Daytona Beach's favorite son Gregg Allman
  • On this day in Florida history - May
    • May 1, 1562 - Jean Ribault arrives at St. Johns River, claims Florida for France
    • May 2, 1936 - Panama City Beach incorporated in Bay County
    • May 3, 1901 - Jacksonville burns to the ground
    • May 4, 1990 - Execution goes awry as flames, smoke shoot from head
    • May 5, 1961 - Alan Shepard becomes first American in space
    • May 6, 1965 - Rolling Stones play Clearwater, write 'Satisfaction' riff
    • May 7, 1940 - Voting machine shortages create long wait at polls
    • May 8, 1923 - Killings of work camp prisoners detailed in hearing
    • May 9, 1981 - Sinkhole swallows house, five Porsches in Winter Park
    • May 10, 1781 - Spanish Gen. Bernardo de Gálvez captures Pensacola
    • May 11, 1996 - ValuJet Flight 592 crashes into Everglades
    • May 12, 1997 - Tornado hits Miami, poses for photos, videos
    • May 13, 1955 - Jax fans chase Elvis after show, tear off his clothes
    • May 14, 1973 - Skylab launches new era of space study...and toys
    • May 15, 1947 - Florida State College for Women goes co-ed, renamed FSU
    • May 16, 1929 - Lake City mob lynches grocer after wife shoots chief
    • May 17, 1980 - Not guilty verdict triggers three days of rioting in Miami
    • May 18, 1955 - Educator Dr. Mary McLeod Bethune dies
    • May 19, 2004 - Drugstore chain owner Jack Eckerd dies at 91
    • May 20, 1913: Henry Morrison Flagler dies in his home at Palm Beach
    • May 21, 1956 - Police close beach after catching black, white teens talking
    • May 22, 1931 - Canned rattlesnake goes on sale from Arcadia
    • May 23, 1898 - School for Deaf & Blind issues first diplomas
    • May 24, 1931 - Writer develops Planet of the Apes storyline for Miami
    • May 25, 1961 - JFK challenges nation to land on moon within decade
    • May 26, 1845 - Florida holds first statewide election
    • May 27, 1965 - Mysterious land deal near Orlando revealed
    • May 28, 1935 - Now controversial "Old Folks At Home" becomes state song
    • May 29, 1967 - Woman jailed after 25 kids found in station wagon
    • May 30, 1989: Claude Pepper dies after 60 years of public service
    • May 31, 1539 - DeSoto comes to Florida, changes continent forever
  • On this day in Florida history - April
    • April 1, 1926 - Air Mail service begins in four Florida cities
    • April 2, 1513 - Juan Ponce de Leon lands in Florida
    • April 3, 2006 - Gators basketball team win first-ever national title
    • April 4, 1933 - NASCAR 2nd generation leader Bill France Jr. is born
    • April 5, 1925 - 'Great Miami Tornado' kills 5, destroys 250 homes
    • April 6, 1959 - Seminole Tribe votes to support building "Alligator Alley"
    • April 7, 1890 - Author, Everglades crusader Marjorie Stoneman Douglas born
    • April 8, 1923 - News of "lost" Tamiami trail blazers heats up
    • April 9, 1921 - Whites kicked out of West Palm Beach "colored" town
    • April 10, 1766 - John Bartram ends journey through Carolinas, Ga., Florida
    • April 11, 1986 - FBI shootout in Dade prompts cops' need for more powerful guns
    • April 12, 1981 - Space Shuttle launched for first time
    • April 13, 1951 - Marion County sheriff killed by forged check suspect
    • April 14, 1528 - Bumbling conqueror Pánfilo de Narváez lands near Tampa
    • April 15, 1896 - Henry Flagler's railroad arrives in Miami for first time
    • April 16, 1915 and 1917 - Aviation takes two steps forward
    • April 17, 1961 - U.S. launches failed Bay of Pigs invasion in Cuba
    • April 18, 1957 - Florida to U.S.: Integration ruling unconstitutional
    • April 19, 1930 - First Publix store incorporated in Winter Haven
    • April 20, 1967 - Orange Juice becomes official state beverage
    • April 21, 1924 - NY's infamous 'Bobbed Haired Bandit' caught in Jax
    • April 22, 2000 - Elian Gonzalez seized in raid, returned to Cuba
    • April 23, 1982 - Keys secede from Union, create Conch Republic
    • April 24, 1965 - Orlando honors hometown astronaut with John Young Day
    • April 25, 1966 - Gov. Haydon Burns says his plane trailed by UFO
    • April 26, 1920 - Crop shippers seizing ice, creating shortage
    • April 27, 1969 - 1,000 students help during FSU admin building fire
    • April 28, 1985 - World's tallest sand sculpture built at Treasure Island
    • April 29, 1980 - U.S. braces for magnitude of Mariel Boatlift
    • April 30, 1915 - Broward County created, named after former governor
  • Hontoon Changling: The ancient owl carving that represents the wrong tribe
  • The Fierce Competition for Rollins College
  • The Hidden History of Everglades City
  • The Legend of Jose Gaspar
  • Burdine's: Sunshine Fashions & The Florida Store
  • Follow the Dollar - Horse breeding brings big money to Central Florida
  • In Cassadaga, the Seance Room is where they talk to the dead
  • St. Petersburg leaders worked overtime to promote their city
  • Paradise for Sale: Florida's Booms and Busts
  • Feature - The Curtiss-Bright Cities
  • Feature - Collected Works of South Florida pioneer Byrd Spilman Dewey
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  • Casey Stengel was a Daytona Beach troublemaker
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  • Daytona's Deadliest Air Crash: Aug. 10, 1937
  • Blog - Zora Neale Hurston's Life on Florida's East Coast
  • Blog - Florida's Worst Freezes
  • Blog - Washtub baths and pot-bellied stoves in 1930s Florida
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Picture
Picture


Zora Neale Hurston's
 unsung years on 
Florida's east coast

Though honored annually with a festival
in her hometown of Eatonville,
the writer and anthropologist spent 
some of the happiest and most productive time of her life living on a houseboat on the Halifax River in Daytona Beach 


Picture
Writer and anthropologist Zora Neale Hurston. Date unknown. Photo: State Archives of Florida, Florida Memory
By Denny Bowden
Volusia History - Retracing

Florida's Past
I was 13, and the night seemed pitch black as I made my path along the wooden docks, careful not to get pinched by boats bumping against the dock when they quietly drummed a “thunk. . . thunk” tune of wood against wood and echoed through the huge covered boat house. Walking in the dark just above the slapping sounds of the river seemed mysterious and a little unsettling with only a dim light here and there high over head – just enough for me to make out the wriggling shrimp on my dangling hook. I was at Howard Boat Works where my father was employed by day.

   I was unaware that 14 years earlier the ambitious young African American writer Zora Neale Hurston was living alone at these same dark docks on her houseboat tied up along the banks of the Halifax River at Howard Boat Works at 633 Ballough Road where Caribbean Jack’s Restaurant is today. “Zora,” as she is affectionately called even by literary critics, is honored every year in her Central Florida hometown of Eatonville (near Orlando) with a festival, but Daytona Beach also deserves a good portion of her honor, too.

First Visit to Daytona Beach, Bethune-Cookman College

    Zora Neale Hurston is best known today for her novel Their Eyes Were Watching God (1937) which is taught in high schools and colleges throughout the U.S., but in 1933 while she was still at the cusp of her career, the flamboyant Hurston came to Daytona Beach for the first time with high hopes because Mary McLeod Bethune, president of Bethune-Cookman College, had invited her to Bethune’s upcoming 57th birthday celebration on July 10. 
   
   Hurston was anticipating the possibility that here in Daytona Beach she could obtain a full-time position, especially craved in the uncertain times of the Great Depression, and she wrote to her benefactor Charlotte Osgood Mason that Mrs. Bethune “has some very powerful friends.”
From the very beginning in her new position at Bethune-Cookman College, Hurston struggled to create a drama school 
   Bethune was impressed that in January, at Rollins College in Winter Park, Hurston had staged a successful Florida premiere of her musical play From Sun to Sun, enlivened with African American folklore and songs, and near the end of 1933 Hurston wrote to a friend that Mrs. Bethune had invited her “to establish a school of dramatic arts based on pure Negro expression” and that Hurston wished to work out themes for the drama school that would be “gorgeously Negro.” 

   What Hurston did not know, though, was that the college was in such need of funds that Mrs. Bethune had given up her own salary for the entire year. This was in character for Bethune who two years earlier had been ranked as one of the top 10 of the 50 most outstanding living American women. 

   From the very beginning in her new position at Bethune-Cookman College, Hurston struggled to create a drama school because during the Great Depression the college had only 226 students, most of whom were actively involved in “major athletics,” college performing groups, and other college organizations.  She later wrote, “I was given the old hospital building without a cent of money and told to turn it into a theatre. I even had difficulty getting a light bulb for my office.” 

   Hurston, as tenacious as a bulldog, successfully arranged for the students to perform From Sun to Sun before an enthusiastic audience of 2,100 at the formerly segregated Daytona Beach Auditorium (where Peabody Auditorium stands today), but she later wrote to others that she had been “plugging away in the dark” and “I decided to abandon the farce of Bethune-Cookman’s Dramatic department and get on with my work.” 

1943 — Living on a Houseboat

   Hurston swept out of Daytona Beach in 1934, but in February 1943 she returned with hope and with money in hand because her autobiographical book, Dust Tracks on a Road, had just been awarded the prestigious Anisfield-Wolf Book Award for the “best book in racial problems in the field of creative literature.”  The prize was $1,000, a huge sum back then – enough for her to buy her first home – a 20-year-old, 32-foot wooden houseboat with a 44-horsepower engine.  She named it Wanago (“Want to Go”), and she set up home at Howard Boat Works.

   Elizabeth Howard has been identified as the young daughter of the white owner of Howard Boat Works by Hurston biographer Virginia Lynn Moylan (though his obituary does not mention a daughter), and Ms. Howard recalls her visits as a child on Hurston’s houseboat: “Inside the cabin were windows all around. I would sit at a little table and Zora would be sitting across from me.” 
She remembers being captivated by Hurston’s folktales, especially “a folktale about how black people got black," adding, "The day Zora told me that story she was wearing a brown turban. I loved Zora’s stories, and I loved Zora.” 
Hurston wrote that on the houseboat, “I have the solitude that I love. . . . All the other boat owners are very nice to me. Not a word about race.”
   Hurston wrote to her novelist friend Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings that on the houseboat in Daytona Beach “I have the solitude that I love. . . . All the other boat owners are very nice to me. Not a word about race.”

   She invited the nationally famous African American poet Countee Cullen to visit, but she jokingly warned him that her houseboat had a small toilet and that he could only squeeze into it “if your behind does not stick out too far.”  Hurston also told Rawlings that the boat was crammed with books and papers.

   For the next four years, Hurston lived on the Wanago and later a second houseboat, taking scenic tours up and down the Halifax River and passionately enjoying fishing.  She wrote, “I love the sunshine the way it is done in Florida. Rain the same way – in great slews or not at all. . . . I dislike cold weather and all of its kinfolk: that takes in bare trees and a birdless morning.” 

   During her first year back in Daytona Beach, 1943, on the houseboat, she wrote magazine articles for the Saturday Evening Post, The American Mercury, Reader’s Digest, and she was hoping to be accepted by The New Yorker, but into the early months of 1944 she continued to live off the Anisfield Prize money, loving her life at Howard Boat Works where she said she “achieved one of my life’s pleasures by owning at last a houseboat.  Nothing to delay the sun in its course. . . . The Halifax River is very beautiful and the various natural expressions of the day on the river keep me happier than I have ever been before in my life. . . . Here, I can actually forget for short periods the greed and ultimate brutality of man to man."

 1944

   Hurston left Daytona Beach for a short while in the spring of 1944, going to New York to develop a musical comedy, Polk County, with Dorothy Waring, a white woman, but she returned home to Daytona Beach in mid-July 1944, and stayed until the fall when she prepared the Wanago and then “sailed” in it 1,500 miles to New York City.

   During 1944, she survived a tonsillectomy as well as a Category 2 hurricane that hit Long Island on Sept. 15 that likely caused her to replace the weathered Wanago with another houseboat that she bought when she returned to Daytona Beach.

 1945-1946

   She named her second houseboat Sun Tan, and she reveled in her homecoming to Florida, as her biographer Robert Hemenway writes, “sometimes eating a dozen oranges at a single sitting.”  She wrote to a friend, however, in July 1945, “I have been sick with my colon and general guts for a long, long time, and really for a while I thought I would kick the bucket.” But then she noted with hope, “The sun is shining in my door.” By then she was writing a novel and several essays.

   In February 1946, while still living at Howard Boat Works, she joined a shrimp boat that went out through Ponce Inlet into the Atlantic Ocean.  Hurston was braving this adventure so she could do research for her novel Seraph on the Suwanee (partially set in New Smyrna Beach), and she wrote, “It was tough and rough. . . .The men, white and black, who put shrimp on the table of the nation are made of the stuff of pioneers.”

   Later, she sold the Sun Tan, possibly to pay for a trip to Honduras to locate a lost Mayan city. Also, after leaving Daytona Beach, she finished her last novel, Seraph on the Suwanee.

 1956 — Last Visit to Daytona Beach, Bethune-Cookman College

   Ten years passed before Hurston returned to Daytona Beach for her final visit – this time to be honored as a special podium guest at the May 28, 1956, commencement ceremony at Bethune-Cookman College.  She was awarded for her contributions to “education and human relations,” an honor that she was pleased to receive.

   Today, 54 years after Hurston’s death in 1960, Daytona Beach honors the author Stephen Crane with a yearly conference at Lilian Place, the house where he recovered from his shipwreck in 1897.  Zora Neale Hurston, one of the most esteemed African American novelists, also deserves similar recognition by Daytona Beach because she made 633 Ballough Road her home for several years.





Denny Bowden, Ph.D., writes about Volusia County history on the blog,
Volusia History - Retracing Florida's Past.
His work is reposted here by permission.
Read more of his Denny's blogs at 
http://volusiahistory.wordpress.com/
Previous posts
Florida's Worst Freezes
Washtub Baths and Pot-bellied Stoves in 1930s Florida
Annie Oakley was nearly crushed to death near Daytona Beach
Before the Seminoles, Timucuans dominated northern Florida
The ghost settlement of Freemanville
Daytona Beach ends Stan Musial's pitching career
and aims him to the Hall of Fame
How Daytona Beach teens' lives changed during World War II