1910s to 1960 - Zora Neale Hurston was criticized for writing in the ‘black voice.’ Now her novels a

Zora Neale Hurston, acclaimed writer of the Harlem Renaissance, was maligned by many black leaders for writing in the colloquial voice of the black, rural townspeople she grew up with in Eatonville, Florida. But it was her unique childhood in an all-black town that shaped her ideas, which defied the focus on racial “uplift” popular among figures such as W.E.B Dubois.