The official blog of the Dramaturgy Department at Baltimore's CENTERSTAGE. For posts related to our current and upcoming shows, click the links to the right. Alternatively, you could begin at the beginning, and explore our posts in chronological order.
Photographs, interviews, media, essays, reflections, history, and more at the NEA Big Read blog about Their Eyes Were Watching God. Give a look and a listen.
Migrant Workers During the Great Depression in Florida (via Florida Memory Project - Migrant Workers During the Great Depression in Florida)
“Work Life in the Camps and Swamps of Florida”
Hurston’s history with life in Southern Florida was not confined to her childhood in Eatonville or her various literary efforts. When she attended Columbia University in the 1920s, Hurston was tutored by anthropologist Franz Boaz. Her knowledge of anthropology was incorporated in the 1930s when she worked for the Federal Writers Project during the Great Depression collecting African-American folklore. Her patroness, Charlotte Osgood Mason, funded an anthropological journey to southern Florida, Haiti, Jamaica, and the Bahamas. In those places, Hurston collected a wealth of folklore through songs, dance, customs, traditions, and cultural norms during her anthropological research trips. (via Zora Neale Hurston & Polk County » Work Life in the Camps and Swamps of Florida)
