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| Zora Neale Hurston born (as Zora Lee Hurston) on January 7 in Notasulga, Alabama, fifth child of Lucy Ann Potts and John Hurston. | Hurston family moves to Eatonville, Florida, a small all-black community five miles north of Orlando, Florida. | Hurston's father is elected mayor of Eatonville. | Hurston's mother dies on September 18; Hurston is sent in October to school in Jacksonville. | Hurston's father remarries. | Hurston lives with various members of her family, works as a domestic. | Hurston travels with a Gilbert & Sullivan troupe as maid to lead singer. | Hurston enters Morgan Academy (high school division of what is now Morgan State University). | Hurston graduates in June from Morgan Academy. | Hurston receives an associate degree from Howard University where she has majored in English and studied with black linguist Lorenzo Dow Turner. | Hurston's first story, "John Redding Goes to Sea" published in Stylus, Howard University's literary club's magazine. | Hurston publishes short story "Drenched in Light" in Opportunity, literary journal of the Urban League. | Hurston moves to New York City; in September enters Barnard College as its only African American student and studies anthropology with Franz Boas. | Hurston leaves New York City in February to collect folklore in the South; marries Herbert Sheen on May 19. Marriage does not last. | Hurston publishes her first novel, Jonah's Gourd Vine. | Hurston publishes Mules and Men, a collection of folklore. | Hurston is awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship in March to study Obeah practices in the West Indies, and travels to Haiti and Jamaica. | Their Eyes Were Watching God, Hurston's most famous novel, is published in September. | Tell My Horse, a volume of Caribbean folklore focused on African religious practices in Jamaica and Haiti, is published in October. | Hurston marries Albert Price III on June 27 in Fernandina, Florida. Marriage does not last. Her novel Moses, Man of the Mountain is published in November. | Hurston's autobiography, Dust Tracks on a Road is published in November. | Hurston's third novel, Seraph on the Suwanee is published in October. | Hurston moves to the one-room cabin in Eau Gallie, Florida where she had previously lived when finishing Mules and Men. | Hurston writes a letter to the Orlando Sentinel condemning the 1954 Brown v. Board of Education Supreme Court decision, which ruled segregated schools unconstitutional; does not believe black children need to be schooled in integrated environments. | Hurston accepts job as a library clerk at Patrick Air Force Base in Cocoa Beach, Florida. | Hurston is fired from her job as a library clerk (her supervisor explains that she is too well educated) and begins writing for the Fort Pierce Chronicle, a local black newspaper. | Hurston works as a substitute teacher at Lincoln Park Academy as her health deteriorates. | Hurston suffers a stroke and in October enters the Saint Lucie County Welfare Home. | Hurston dies on January 28 in the Saint Lucie County Welfare Home. Her funeral is paid for by a collection from local friends and acquaintances and she is buried in an unmarked grave in the Garden of Heavenly Rest, a segregated cemetery in Fort Pierce, Florida. |