![]() A form of local magic, hoodoo can be used to settle disputes and love affairs, cure diseases, even to cause the death of an enemy. The next year, Hurston found herself in New Orleans collecting not only folklore, but conjure-lore, also known as hoodoo. She was eventually run out of the camp by a knife-wielding foe. This provided the basis for her first anthropological work, Mules and Men. She quickly won over the few women in the camp and spent hours speaking with both the men and women, collecting tales, songs, folk-stories, even lies. To explain her fancy car and manners, she passed herself off as a bootleggers woman on the run. Hurston decided upon a logging community in the Everglades as her first experiment in covert research. ![]() Her next trip to the South provided her with a wealth of African-American tales. Though this trip was not particularly productive, she learned the most important aspect of her anthropological research: the importance of immersing herself in the community she studied. ![]() Under his tutelage, she traveled to Florida to collect folklore. Listen to Hurston's description of voodoo magicĪfter gaining respect as an author, in 1927 Hurston received a research fellowship to work with Franz Boas, a well-known anthropologist. Zora Neale Hurston may be well-known today as one of the prominent voices of the Harlem Renaissance, but few realize that she was the first African-American to chronicle African-American folklore and voodoo. Click Hurston's photo to hear her description of zombies.
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