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).