Educational Resources
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Resources
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The Florida Historical Society houses a wide array of both primary and secondary source materials from the colonial era to present day tourism trends available to researchers and students. However, when a visit to the library is not optional, our Teacher’s Resource Page will give students and educators the ability to access as much of our archived materials as possible.
The office of the Educational Resources Coordinator at the Florida Historical Society is always looking for new ways to enhance the educational experience for social studies students, especially in particular aspects of Florida history.
We encourage instructors to contact the Educational Resources Coordinator to schedule visits to the Library of Florida History to learn about archival work with hands on demonstrations, and understand how to use primary source materials in their research.
We understand that especially in these times of shrinking budgets, it can be difficult to travel here. As part of the Florida Historical Society’s outreach initiative, we would be pleased to travel to your school for a presentation on the FHS and using primary sources. Please contact the Educational Resources Coordinator for further details.
Ben DiBiase
ben.dibiase@myfloridahistory.org
Audio
Audio from the Florida Frontiers radio shows can be downloaded as digital mp3 files
Books
Here you will find various teachers’ guides to FHS publications designed to help students understand Florida history through easy to read stories. Please click on the photo of the book for a detailed summary and downloadable teacher’s guide. You will also find videos and other resources that can be adapted for classroom use. Please check back often as we are constantly updating our digital classroom tools, and we are always open for new ideas and user comments.
| FHS publications helping teachers and students through easy to read stories: | |||
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Florida Tales
“Florida Tales is a wonderful collection of creative, relatable, educational and positively entertaining short stories designed to educate younger readers of a time in Florida history that has since gone. Writing under the pseudonym of Carolyn Teicher Potts, author Nick Wynne weaves together whimsical tales with basic underlying elements moral values. This book is a great primer for sociological studies in Florida history.” 
-Ben DiBiase
High Above the Hippodrome
High Above the Hippodrome is a captivating behind-the-scenes story of circus life on the road with The Ringling and Barnum and Bailey Circus in 1927. Rich with circus lore the tale draws readers into the excitement and thrills of the Big Top.”
-Author
Phillip’s Great Adventure
“Phillip’s Great Adventure; Spies, Root Beer and Alligators, is a wonderful story of a young man growing up during a time that has since passed by. The protagonist is a young boy by the name of Adam who befriends an older gentleman had lived in the small town of Boca Raton FL during the Second World War. The young Adam is in search of treasure, and instead finds himself involved in these wonderful tales of life in Boca Raton during WWII through the eyes of Phillip. The stories are rooted in actual historical events that occurred in and around Boca Raton during WWII, and weave in wonderful motivational and inspiring stories that young people from all over can enjoy and relate to.”
-Ben DiBiase
Florida Historical Society
Saving Home
“Saving Home is an historical novel set during the English siege of St. Augustine in 1702. The story is told through the eyes of nine-year-old Luissa de Cueva and her friends, ten-year-old Diego de las Alas, and a Timucuan Indian girl named Junco. Based on meticulous research, Saving Home engages readers of all ages with descriptions of Spanish and Native American families seeking refuge for more than six weeks within the walls of the Castillo de San Marcos as St. Augustine goes up in flames and a battle rages around them. This exciting historical novel has messages about life, family, and what is important that will resonate with both the young and the young hearted.”
-Author
At the bottom of the pages is a Teachers Guide in pdf format that can be downloaded or viewed in a frame on this page
| Attachment | Size |
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| SAVHOMEteachersguide.pdf | 2.86 MB |
Exhibits, Zora Neale Hurston in Brevard County
Teacher's Curriculum Guide for:
Zora Neale Hurston in Brevard County, FL
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Curriculum Guide for Zora Neale Hurston in Brevard County, FL
At the bottom of this page are links for aTeacher's Curriculum Guide for Zora Neale Hurston in Brevard County, FL in pdf format that can be downloaded or viewed in the below frame on this page if your web browser supports embedded pdf.
Panel 1, Zora Neal Hurston in Brevard County
On July 9, 1951, writer, folklorist, and anthropologist Zora Neale Hurston wrote in a letter to Florida historian Jean Parker Waterbury: “Somehow, this one spot on earth feels like home to me. I have always intended to come back here. That is why I am doing so much to make a go of it.”
It would be natural to assume that Hurston was writing about her adopted hometown of Eatonville, Florida. Growing up in the oldest incorporated municipality in the United States entirely governed by African Americans instilled in Hurston a fierce confidence in her abilities and a unique perspective on race. Eatonville figures prominently in much of Hurston’s work, from her powerful 1928 essay How It Feels To Be Colored Me to her acclaimed 1937 novel Their Eyes Were Watching God. Since 1990, the Association to Preserve the Eatonville Community (P.E.C.) has celebrated their town’s most famous citizen with the annual Zora Neale Hurston Festival of the Arts and Humanities. Hurston will forever be associated with the historic town of Eatonville.
But Hurston was not writing about Eatonville when she spoke of “the one spot on earth [that] feels like home to me” where she was “the happiest I have been in the last ten years” and where she wanted to “build a comfortable little new house” to live out the rest of her life.
Unknown to most, Zora Neale Hurston called Brevard County “home” for some of the happiest and most productive years of her life.
Panel 2, Zora Neal Hurston in Brevard County
Brevard County has a rich and varied history. It is known as the site of the 7,000 year-old Windover Mortuary Pond, one of the most significant archaeological discoveries in the world; the home of educator and activist Harry T. Moore, the first martyr of the contemporary Civil Rights Movement; and the launch pad for every manned space flight from the United States. Very few people are aware, however, of the significant history relating to Zora Neale Hurston in Brevard County.
Hurston first moved to Eau Gallie in 1929, where she was very productive. Here she wrote the book of African American folklore Mules and Men (published in 1935), documented research she had done in Florida and New Orleans to fill an entire issue of the Journal of American Folklore, and made significant progress on some of her theatrical pieces.
After returning to New York in late 1929, Hurston came back to Eau Gallie in 1951, moving into the same cottage where she had lived previously. While living in Eau Gallie between 1951 and 1956, Hurston staged a concert at Melbourne High School (its first integrated event); worked on the project that became her passion, the manuscript for Herod the Great; covered the 1952 murder trial of Ruby McCollum (an African American woman who killed her white lover); and wrote an editorial for the Orlando Sentinel arguing against the Brown v. Board of Education decision. Her controversial disapproval of public school integration reflects her belief in the need to preserve African American culture and communities.
Panel 3, Zora Neal Hurston in Brevard County
When Hurston was unable to purchase her much loved Eau Gallie cottage, she moved to an efficiency apartment in Cocoa, while working as a librarian at the Technical Library for Pan American World Airways on Patrick Air Force Base. In June, 1956, Hurston moved from the apartment to a mobile home on Merritt Island. She was fired from her job in May 1957, because she was “too well-educated for the job.” She then left her happy life in Brevard County to take a job at the Chronicle in Fort Pierce, where she died three years later.
Zora Neale Hurston is remembered as a controversial figure of the Harlem Renaissance, a talented anthropologist and collector of folklore, and a beloved novelist. While she will always be closely associated with her adopted hometown of Eatonville, Brevard County is where Hurston spent some of her happiest and most productive years, in her cottage on the northeast corner of what is now the intersection of Guava Avenue and Aurora Road in Eau Gallie.
More information about Zora Neale Hurston’s time in Brevard County can be found in the book Zora Neale Hurston’s Final Decade by Virginia Lynn Moylan (University Press of Florida, 2011) and the television documentary The Lost Years of Zora Neale Hurston (Florida Historical Society, 2011).
Panel 4, Zora Neal Hurston in Brevard County
YOU BE THE HISTORIAN!
Part of what an historian does is to collect facts, analyze the information, and draw conclusions based on the available evidence.
The question for you is: Did Caroline P. Rossetter and Zora Neale Hurston know each other?
Here are some of the available facts:
- Caroline P. Rossetter was a very successful businesswoman. In 1921, at the age of 23, she took over her father’s Standard Oil Agency and ran it successfully for 62 years. She began her career just months after women received the right to vote in the United States!
- By the 1930s, Zora Neale Hurston was a very successful writer and a celebrity of the “Harlem Renaissance.” Her presence was generally noticed.
- Carrie Rossetter was a prominent white woman who lived at the south end of Eau Gallie’s “main street” in a very small community.
- Zora Neale Hurston was a famous African American writer who lived at the north end of Eau Gallie’s “main street” in the same very small community.
- Hurston’s Eau Gallie home was in an African American part of town when she lived there in 1929. When she came back to the same house in 1951, it was now in a “white” neighborhood. In the racially segregated south, Hurston was only “allowed” to move back into the house with the support of Eau Gallie’s white mayor, W. Lansing Gleason.
- Carrie Rossetter was a close friend of Eau Gallie mayor W. Lansing Gleason.
WHAT DO YOU THINK? IS THERE ENOUGH EVIDENCE TO DRAW A CONCLUSION?
Video
The original theatrical presentation Female Florida: Historic Women in Their Own Words features depictions of businesswoman Caroline P. Rossetter, writer Zora Neale Hurston, environmentalist Marjory Stoneman Douglas, and educator Mary McLeod Bethune. The Florida Historical Society created and presented this production with a “preview” performance at the Library of Florida History in Cocoa on January 21, 2011, and three “premiere” performances in Eatonville Town Hall on January 28, 2011, as part of the 22nd Annual Zora Neale Hurston Festival of the Arts and Humanities. Lady Gail Ryan portrayed Rossetter and Douglas, and Deloris Purdie played Hurston and Bethune. | ||
Below is a downloadable Curriculum Guide for Female Florida: Historic Women in Their Own Words and four video segments from the production that can be shown in the classroom or assigned for homework viewing. Images to the left are linked to associated videos for Zora Hurston, Majory Stoneman Douglas, Carrie Rossetter and Mary McLeod Bethune. At the bottom of the page are addtional video and file links. | ||
| Attachment | Size |
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| FemaleFlorida_CuriculumGuide.pdf | 1.1 MB |
Bethune: Historic Women In Their Own Words - Mary McLeod Bethune
Female Florida: Historic Women In Their Own Words - Part 4 of 4 - Mary McLeod Bethune from Florida Historical Society on Vimeo. Video stored on vimeo and may be downloaded with vimeo login.
Douglas: Historic Women In Their Own Words - Marjory Stoneman Douglas
Female Florida: Historic Women In Their Own Words - Part 3 of 4 - Marjory Stoneman Douglas from Florida Historical Society on Vimeo. Video stored on vimeo and may be downloaded with vimeo login.
Hurston: Historic Women In Their Own Words - Zora Neale Hurston
Female Florida: Historic Women In Their Own Words - Part 2 of 4 - Zora Neale Hurston from Florida Historical Society on Vimeo. Video stored on vimeo and may be downloaded with vimeo login.
Rossetter: Historic Women In Their Own Words - Caroline P. Rossetter
Female Florida: Historic Women In Their Own Words - Pt. 1 of 4 - Caroline P. Rossetter from Florida Historical Society on Vimeo. Video stored on vimeo and may be downloaded with vimeo login.