Zora Neale Hurston was raised in an all-black community in Florida but left home at a young age. She worked various jobs and eventually attended Howard University, publishing stories. In the 1920s, she moved to Harlem during the Harlem Renaissance and became friends with writers like Langston Hughes. She was the only African American student at Barnard College where she studied anthropology, traveling the American South to collect folklore. Hurston published several novels and works of folklore in the 1930s-40s but then faded into obscurity, holding various jobs until her death in 1960. She was rediscovered in the 1970s by Alice Walker.

1. Zora Neale Hurston 1891-1960