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Preserving Songs and Culture: Zora Neale Hurston and the Federal Writers’ Project

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This post is by Rebecca Newland, the 2013-15 Library of Congress Teacher in Residence.

Zora Hurston beating a drum, 1937
[Zora Hurston, half-length portrait, standing, facing slightly left, beating the hountar, or mama drum], 1937
By the time Zora Neale Hurston went to work for the Florida Writers’ Project in 1939, she had already written her novel Their Eyes Were Watching God