The semester has been busy, so this year's thanksgiving is a welcomed break. As I think about ongoing work and plan for next semester, I realize that one theme comes through--the unique experience of African-Americans in Florida. As one faculty out of many concerned about Florida as prism to understand the American experience (and I mean the Americas, not the United States alone), I keep seeing unique links between the Florida experience and how we understand the past. Case in point, Thanksgiving!! Dr. Michael Gannon, of course long ago pointed out the first thanksgiving celebration took place in Florida. A story he shared when he visited the college in April and received the Alfred J. Hanna Award in recognition of his long career and work. I'm not going to step into that hornet nest, but it reminded me, as I attempt not to over eat, that the Florida experience is different.
This semester several departments on campus as getting together to support and participate in programs and discussions about Zora Neale Hurston. As many of you likely know, Eatonville, FL hosts the Zora Neale Hurston Festival of the Arts and Humanities. The festival, celebrates Hurston's life and work. The festival in 2010 is unique in that it marks the 50 year anniversary of Hurston's death. For Rollins's this is a unique opportunity to explore our relationship with Hurston. While others may stress their interest in the Hurston, the fact of the matter is that Rollins has a real and important place in Hurston's life.
Considered one of the most important writers of the African-American experience in the twentieth century, Hurston’s work is closely linked to the African-American cultural and intellectual invigoration associated with the Harlem Renaissance. Hurston wrote two books of folklore and four novels using her training as an anthropologist and extensive fieldwork as a foundation. While it is not well known today, in 1932, Professor Edwin Osgood Grover and Professor Robert Wunsch helped Hurston develop her ideas about folk theater. While teaching and working at the college, she wrote and staged From Sun to Sun (1933) and All De Live Long Day (1935), both of which, explore southern work culture. The Olin Archive's Zora Neale Hurston Collection contains archival letters related to these events. Moreover, Rollins was and continues to be an institution interested in promoting dialogue. As the program for the Interfaith and Race Relations Committee listed above suggests.
Hurston's renewal, driven by writers like Alice Walker and media tycoons like Oprah Winfrey has made her a cottage industry. Yet, some of the most interesting parts of Hurston's story are often overlooked. Her time at Rollins is one example, but her conservatism is another. One thing, I hope that comes from the projects we are planning right now is a better understanding of how Hurston, a product of an all black community, could be resistance to the integration message associated with modern civil rights movement. I know from oral history and primary document research that the black communities in Florida felt a great sense of pride. That holiday celebrations, such as Thanksgiving were a time for families to come together and celebrate their good fortune. Indeed, communities like Eatonville and Hannibal Square in Winter Park had much to be thankful about. Self-governed and containing a large number of property owners, these all black communities provided security and protection for African-Americans in the later nineteenth century, a time when rising anti-black violence and political disenfranchisement was crippling black autonomy from its heights durng Reconstruction. Hurston always express great pride and rejected any suggestion that somehow African-Americans were not equal to whites. Indeed, her literary legacy is an investigation of black belief and black thought that practically omits whites. She has been branded a conservative, but is this conservatism is the classic sense that historians have used to describe schism within the black community? I think Hurston's story offers a more complex narrative about what it means to be African-American in the late nineteenth century. Part of that story I believe is a story of Florida's frontier status, the independents that existed in state and was enjoyed by its residents. Am I suggest, lesser racism in Florida? No, the strange case of the detachment and annexiation of the Hannibal Square proves that the politics of race in Florida was and continues to be a powerful force. Nonetheless, the flexibility offered by unsettled space and the power gained by creating community is a worthy topic to consider.
